OK, let's talk about sexuality in the bathroom!

Hey to all, or 'moi', as we say in Finland, I am Donho Likkanen. You may not have heard of me, but if you perhaps have been invited into the bathrooms of any wealthy people with good taste (or sometimes their bedrooms too!), you may have admired my creations. I am the foremost designer in the world today of plumbing fixtures inspired by the human form. When I say 'foremost', I mean of course, I am the most highly paid. My fixtures are not for everybody. You can see for yourself if you can afford my luxurious fittings at: Likkanen.com.Although of course, if you have to ask the price, it is likely you cannot, LOL!

Did you know that there has always been a historical connection between sex and bathing? Yes, it's true! From the first dawn of civilizations the bath and sexual naughtiness have always gone hand in hand, as in classical Greece, the famous Baths of Caracalla in Rome, or the modern Turkish bath. Nowadays, of course, we unfortunately cannot purchase young slaves to provide us with healthful orgasms, but with a little confidence, an open attitude, and most importantly, good bathroom design, you can enjoy the joyful expression of sexual cleanliness in its natural habitat. After all, sex is just like any other bodily function; this is the Finnish way. And here at last is a Forum to discuss these matters frankly and honestly. When I think of the word 'forum' of course I am reminded of the 'Penthouse Forum', which helped to teach me so many sexual matters of etiquette and technique in my youth--as well as my fluent, full-bodied, and well-rounded English.

I wish to apologize to all for this latest change in email address. The old mailboxes keep getting filled up, so I have to constantly be opening new accounts.

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Don Juan in Helsinki: 25

Bjorn and I first met during a playground fist-fight. It was my first day at Middle School, and I knew no one there. But someone there already knew me--and was lying in wait to give me a beating. Typical for Vaino, of course, he did not attack me himself but instead incited a group of other boys to do so on a dusty part of the playground where dozens of us were kicking battered old footballs around during the lunch recess. I was not a complete fool and knew straightway I was in for trouble as soon as these morons marched up to harrass me; in fact, being a true Finn and rather fond of a fight myself, I welcomed the distraction. However, as soon as I had settled comfortably into a punching match with one rather chubby lad, I was grabbed from behind by two of his mates and tackled to the ground. Having grown up in the wealthy, sheltered neighbourhood of Etu-Töölö, I was taken by surprise by this tactic and protested loudly over it until I was winded by being kicked in the stomach. Through a gap in their legs, I could see Vaino standing some distance apart from the action, watching and laughing at the sight. We had never formally met, but he had several times been pointed out to me and was easily recognizable from his good looks and bright mop of corn-silk hair. This was my first experience of his flair for the dramatic, and it was an instructive one--though, sadly, I cannot say I properly learned my lesson at the time. Perhaps I should have, had not Bjorn waded in at that moment.

'This is not very sporting, three against one!' he loudly declared, taking off his glasses and putting them in his breast pocket. His thick hair stood up like a badger's brush, so that he appeared a full head taller than any of the rest of us.

'What's it to you, homo?' one of my attackers wittily replied. Bjorni lowered his head and, butting him in the chest, bowled him over, then turned to deal with the second. Meanwhile, cheered by this diversion, I got up and resumed my punching of the fat one, though he proved largely indifferent to my blows. Seeing the fate of his two friends over my shoulder, however, he decided it most prudent to retreat, and so Bjorn and I soon found ourselves left alone.

'I'm Donho Likkanen,' I said, shaking his hand as if we were adults. 'Thanks.'

'Bjorn Wahlroos,' he said, giving a little imperial German snap of his head in salute. His face was flushed bright red, and he seemed to suddenly have a frog in his throat from embarrassment. And so we became true friends. After all, at that time we were both new at the school, and nobody else liked us. Naturally, we both assumed that this would be the case in boot camp, as well.

What neither of us could have foreseen was that Bjorni would take to army life like a duck to water. You see, Bjorn Wahlroos was a big Communist in those days. Yes, it is true. He was a "Taistolainen", which was some sort of radical 'pure Marxist' movement that was attractive to rich hippie youths, though not to those like me who hated Russians (http://aarhus2001.hum.au.dk/frieabstracts/friepapers6.html). However, like Joschka Fischer in Germany, many of our Finnish politicians, such as the president lady who looks like Conan O'Brian and her foreign minister Erkki Tuomioja, were also members of these Red cells, like Baader-Mainhof or Rote Fraktion. This was why Bjorn was going to the School of Economics at the university--to learn about money and thus destroy capitalism from within. Well, it seemed a harmless hobby to me. And besides, Bjorn had always had trouble getting girls. Though the sort of girls one met at Communist rallies in those days tended to look like, well, Conan O'Brian. No, the trouble was that Bjorni was serious. The Finnish army was entirely made up of conscripts; already there were many stories of protests, of mass slacking, even desertions. Well, it was 1973, after all--the Americans were protesting, why shouldn't we? Even though, of course, we lived in the peaceful socialist paradise of Finland and thus had nothing to actually protest about. That didn't matter to Bjorn; his plan was to organize Army cells from the ranks, like on the Battleship Potemkin, I suppose, and I was afraid he would get into big trouble. He was particularly depressed that autumn over the military coup in Chile.

'This is exactly why we workers need to be learning weapons training,' he would say angrily. 'To take the revolution to these Fascist bastards.' Myself, I thought Allende was a KGB stooge and deserved exactly what he got, but I held my tongue. Tongues, penises, these are what you keep to yourself in a military barracks; it is the opposite of sex. And of course, I needn't have worried about Bjorni getting into trouble. Within a few weeks, he had become a pet of the 'Skeba', which is what we called drill sergeants, and was already being offered a chance to go to the AUK, the reserve officers' training school.

'He's just the sort of motivated idealist we need,' the captain told me during his background interview. 'He reminds me of myself at that age. I was always saying everything was unfair, as well. Well, this is the sensible way to view things--after all, the army isn't fair. Life isn't fair!'

Life isn't fair? Hearing this officer in Mannerheim's army talking like a spoiled child in this way suddenly and unaccountably filled me with shame. I detested boot camp and was anxious to be done with my intti as quickly as possible, yet after hearing this I resolved not to do any any more slacking. In fact, if I had not met Maarit I think I might have applied to AUK myself and perhaps even have become a career soldier. In may ways, it is a life that would have suited my temperament very well. However, that didn't seriously occur to me at the time. All I knew was that now Bjorn would stay in for a year, while I, as a mere civilian conscript, would only have to put in 6 months. But things didn't work out for me exactly according to plan, either.

For the first eight weeks of camp, there was no leave, so I couldn't possibly see Maarit. Sometimes on the weekend, I would stand in the long line for the pay telephones in the 'Sode', or base canteen, and try to telephone her, but only rarely was I able to find her at home. I felt like I was dying inside from this, so much so that I scarcely even noticed the training itself, all the many things that the other 'mortti' constantly complained about. Not that we were given much time to complain. We were kept constantly busy running, marching, standing still, learning to salute, learning to polish and fire our 'rynki' (rifle), even how to clean the toilets or our teeth according to regulation. This part was good, because I didn't have to think. The part I hated came much later, when we had to ride bicycles for a hundred kilometres a day. You see, the basic tactic of the Finnish armed forces is to ride bicycles around. This is not a joke. Small squads of bicyclists are meant to retreat through forest roads and trails, constantly sniping at the flanks of the oncoming Soviet army in order to funnel them into the path of our big guns. In winter, we train to do this on skis. This is how we fought both our wars against them, and of course our military never trains to fight any other enemy (or any other war), no matter what they pretend. Who else would invade us? Norway?

No, no, here is the joke. Finland was so short of ordnance and materiel that when it came to be my time to learn to fire these big howitzer guns, I would endlessly train to carry the shells through the rain and mud, to load, to aim, to clean the firing chambers--but we never actually fired the gun! I suppose this is a proper metaphor for all those months I spent in uniform. Here is another: just outside the main gates stood a lone telephone box that someone in communications had rigged to call anywhere in Finland for just 25 penniä. So whenever a company was out in the fields training, we would try to manoeuvre our sergeant close to this call-box in order to sneak off one by one into it. Just before my first eight weeks were up, I managed to get through to Maarit this way.

'What is that noise? It sounds like a real war!'

'It's just the gas attack siren,' I said. 'We're having drills.' I was lying flat on the ground dressed in a waterproof poncho against the 'nerve-gas', but had slipped my big rubber mask off in order to talk to her into the dangling receiver. From time to time there was the rattle of machine-gun fire to keep my squad pinned down, but because no real bullets could be wasted, even the 'training' ones for recruits with wooden tips, these were usually just blanks.

'Are they using real gas?' she asked. Her voice was sweet and warm in my ear.

'No, no, just blue smoke. If they were using real gas, I'd be already dead. Then I wouldn't get to come see you next weekend. Will you keep it free for me?' There was another sudden loud racket; I had to ask her again twice before I could hear her answer.

That night in the barracks I told Bjorn I was going to see her. His was the bunk below mine.

'Well, don't eat any of the nöde from the canteen then,' said Paavo from the next bunk over. 'You won't be able to get it up if you do.' It was a common myth that the army put saltpetre ('jarru') in the Spam in order to render all us new recruits ('mortti') impotent.

'You really should think about asking her to marry you,' Bjorn told me, very seriously. 'Maarit is a once-in-a-lifetime sort of girl.'

'I have thought of it,' I said. Which was true enough, even though in Finland men and women do not normally marry until they are nearly thirty. If ever. What I did not tell Bjorni was that if I asked her, Maarit would certainly say no. He needed no more encouragement, I decided, to become a rival. But Bjorn, of course, was never the one I needed to worry about. Alone of everyone I would ever know in my life, he had old-fashioned ideas of honour. In fact, nowadays the word itself, once typed, resembles the name of a dinosaur.

'Well, let's shut up and get some sleep then. You don't want some bastard sergeant wrecking your leave with detention duty just for talking after lights-out.'

'Who needs a sergeant with you around, Nalle?' Paavo replied. ''Nalle'--Teddy-Bear--was what Bjorni told everyone was his nickname back home, though in fact only his mother had ever called him that. 'Let the man dream.'

'Let us all dream,' called out someone else in the near-dark.

But when I finally was with Maarit again the following weekend, I was impotent, after all. Paavo had been right! It was like a curse from a fairy-tale. Because as soon as I had swaggered off the bus in my combat boots and fatigues, wearing the green beret that all Finnish soldiers wore, and we had checked into a cheap hotel and ripped off all our clothes, I could not have a healthful erection.

'What's the matter?' asked Maarit, laughing. 'Gone homo? Too many cute guys in the showers?'

I shook my head. The hotel room seemed unreal to me after so many weeks in the barracks; it seemed so very strange to be alone with her and not surrounded by dozens of others. But of course we were not quite alone, were we? We were having a threesome in the bed now with my jealousy, who crouched in the corner like a shadow.

'Have you stopped wanting me, then?' she asked. I shook my head again.

'No, no, of course not. I've thought of nothing else but you every night.'

'Then what?'

'Have you been seeing anyone else?' You see, I couldn't help myself. It was just like an illness. And that is exactly how Maarit treated me, half-pitying, half-annoyed, as if I was sick with some disease to which she was immune.

'Lemo, don't ask. Seriously, never ever ask any woman a question you don't want to hear the answer to. Even if it's just whether she likes your friends or not. Or how good you are in bed. Now don't spoil our time together by sulking--we only have a few more hours. Do you really want to spend them like this?' I said nothing. She stroked my arms, then my thigh. 'You've gotten hard everywhere else,' she said. 'It must be all that exercise--it's very sexy. OK, Ok, I'll tell you a secret, then...I've missed you. And when I'm missing someone, I'm not so interested in anyone else. That will have to answer your question.'

It took another hour or two and several more tries, but finally the 'jarru' wore off. That was the last time that such an embarrassing thing has ever happened to me, until a few years ago in New York, when it happened again with my doctor. Well, I suppose, it's always a mistake to bonk your doctor, isn't it? That would make most men impotent, I think, especially after a colonoscopy.

'What's a "colonoscopy"?' Esa-Pekka interrupts me to ask. When I explain he nods, as if he has heard of some clever trick to cheat them, while Stig merely glowers incredulously, as if I'm making the whole nasty business up.

'In America, they make you have one when you turn 50,' I tell them. It seems a pretty poor birthday present indeed, now that I come to think of it. We are sitting in a new bar now, the 'William K'. which advertises itself as a 'Dutch whiskey bar'. So Esa-Pekka and Stig have switched to whiskey and begun to drink seriously, but I cannot. I do not have their body weight.

'Why didn't you just get Viagra from the doctor, so that you could bonk her?' asks Esa-Pekka. 'I've tried that stuff, and it's a wonderful invention. Say what you like about the vitun Amerikkalaiset, but they are clever at inventing useful things.'

'Jaap, but their film industry is straight from the arse-hole these days,' mutters Stig.

'I didn't like to ask her,' I tell them. 'Besides, being impotent was really just an excuse to break things off with her.' They nod sympathetically; this is a common Finnish act of male consideration when one loses interest. After all, one doesn't want to say anything unflattering to a woman, but she cannot argue with a limp penis. And with Dr. Astarte, one could not often get a word in edgeways in any case. Whatever caused me to bonk with her in the first place, I suddenly wonder? I cannot remember. That is always a very bad sign with a woman. But she was an excellent diagnostician, in spite of all her New Age nonsense--and I have always found lab smocks and uniforms attractive on chicks, like those of nurses and airline hostesses. Perhaps that was it. Or perhaps it was that i first went to see her with a urinary infection, and that created a sort of instant bond of erotic intimacy between us.

'But have you tried it?'

'Tried what?'

'Viagra!' says Esa-Pekka loudly. Several other people turn to stare at us.

'Well,' I say cautiously, 'I have experimented with it a bit, yes.' Well, quite a bit, actually, but no one really needs to know this.

'Esa-Pekka is quite the ladies' man,' observes Stig with something like envy. 'He has been married three times. I, on the other hand, haven't even bonked with a woman in many years. Finnish women are all lost to materialism these days and cannot be saved.' Saved? Saved from what? Is he some sort of religious fanatic? He glances over at a group of them now; they are in early middle age, and already have the widening waists, sausage-like upper arms, and too-bright lip gloss that signal desperation. But they do not return his wistful stare; evidently they are not yet that desperate. Of course, the night is young. As if he, too, has had this thought, Stig adds, 'But I would like to try it sometime. The problem is meeting anyone. All the older ones care about is what money and security a man has. The young ones, of course, are all little sluts and tarts these days--they are just begging for it.' The rest of his thought hangs unspoken in the air: begging for it, perhaps. But not from us any more. Not from us.

Next: "The Viagra Monologues"

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Don Juan in Helsinki: 24

But when she took the ferry to Estonia the next weekend, Maarit didn't take me with her.

Now, there is something you must know about me--I hate detective shows on television. Or detective novels. They are all nonsense; any policeman will tell you that. Most of the time when there is a murder, like those two gangsters we found dead in Gatchina, for instance, the police may have a good idea of who did it, but only once in every ten times or in some countries, almost never, is the right person ever caught. Or convicted. And even when they are, well, the victim is often so much like his killer that it's hard for the cops to care. The cops who haven't been paid to forget all about it anyway, that is. Yet all over the world, people right at this very instant are watching TV shows about detectives, some of them gay-blade Hollywood actors, some of them little old English ladies, who solve such crimes.

But why? What is the appeal? No one cares about the victims, they are just pieces of meat. I never even found out the names of the two dead Russians in the X-ray shop. Perhaps they were brothers. Perhaps they were named Boris and Arkady. Had they drifted into crime just to support their mother? Were they Zenit Leningrad football fans? Did they enjoy reading the novels of Bulgakov? Or going to the theatre to see 'White Guard' or 'The Ascent of Mt. Fuji'? What did they think of 'Solyaris'? You see? Who cares? You don't; they are just dead meat. The story is over for them, and they are already forgotten. No, no, mystery is about something else altogether. For women, I think it has more to do with the riddle of birth; for men, perhaps, that of death (and, after all, the two are really the same thing; one is a point of origin, the other a final destination, but both are the same dark hole). The police procedures are merely a ritual, the same that people used to hear every Sunday in church. After all, until a few hundred years ago, there were no police detectives at all--and the word 'mystery' was used only in religion, as in the Medieval 'mystery plays'. Their central mystery was that of the 'Saviour', Jesus Christ, and before that, divine figures like Orpheus. The 'Crime Scene Investigation' is like a Neolithic burial rite for the soul's final journey; the autopsy like the Christian Communion. That is why such television shows are now so popular--the modern, secular human still misses this in his life.

So, if this were a detective novel, here is what would happen. I would 'tail' Maarit to Tartu and discover the identities of the gangsters who had 'framed' her cousin Märkko for the 'hit'. I would be clubbed over the head breaking into Peko's villa looking for evidence, perhaps, I would be questioned by the police, get into a fist-fight, and there would be a shootout at the end. Or a car-chase. Or both. And, of course, I would get the girl. All these pictures, I admit it, were in my head at the time. Because I am just as stupid as everyone else. Of course, if I had tried to play detective, it would have been even stupider for me; today Tiu Silves is the most famous female gangster in the world. She is the biggest crimelord in Estonia and travels everywhere with twenty armed bodyguards, more even than George Bush has. I have learned the hard way that life is not a detective novel. It reveals its mysteries very slowly over time, and by the time you learn them, mostly they no longer matter--or you no longer care. And you never get the girl, or if you do, you never keep her for very long. Because, OK, OK, I will be totally honest with you; after Maarit and I had a big fight over my coming with her to Estonia--after she said no--I decided to follow her on the ferry anyway. Just to keep her in sight and make sure she was safe. The reason for this was that after seeing those two dead bodies, for the first time in my life, I was feeling a new and very strange emotion: I was worrying about somebody besides myself. I didn't like it very much, and later, after Maarit left me, I never did it again. Because, actually it is not any fun at all to feel this way. In fact, it hurts. That is why I stopped; I may enjoy many kinky sexual turn-ons, but masochism is not one of them. In this, I think I am a true Finn.

In addition, none of this will make very good sense to a modern person, this following another person on the ferry, for example. But this was in the age before the invention of the cell-phone or the Internet. It's hard to understand, I know, but another person could walk away from you on a city street or a ferry pier and you might never hear a word from them again for the rest of your life. Truly, we lived like savages in those days.

So there I was on the ferry from Länsisatama, Helsinki's western port terminal, wearing a grey trilby hat and a bone-white 'Imper' trench-coat I had borrowed from my father's closet for a bit of a disguise. I had considered taking one of his pipes as well, but decided that would have looked too ridiculous for someone my age. Even more ridiculous than I already looked, I should say. I stood at the rail in the sea-spray feeling like Orpheus following Eurydice into Hades, ignoring the stares of the other passengers, smoking, and staring down into the urine-dark sea. Naturally, it took Maarit less than 15 minutes to spot me standing there (just as she had on that first evening just six weeks before), and so naturally, we had another big fight, much to their amusement. At the end of it, however, she was giggling again at the sight of me. 'I don't think they'll even let you into Talinn looking like that,' she said. 'Certainly you don't have a visa to go anywhere else. I have to take to take the train to Tartu, in the south. What were you thinking?'

'I was worried about you,' I said miserably.

'There's no need, these people are my family. If you had any, you would understand. I'll be perfectly safe--this is just about business.' But it was she who didn't understand. I was in love--I couldn't bear to let her out of my sight. She was the foundation stone on which all my happiness rested. And it was a very flimsy one, indeed, so not very much happiness was fated in the future for poor Likkanen. On this occasion, however, she took pity on me, invited me into the ship's lounge, bought us both coffees, and told me a bit more about her business. Women fancy themselves much smarter than men, and it's no wonder, because we are so easy for them to manipulate when they are young. However, most women are actually quite stupid and ignorant of the real world. Not Maarit, though. She was born knowing everything. Perhaps I have given you the false impression that she was talkative. Nothing could be further from the truth; for a woman, she was actually very quiet. So when she spoke, I was always careful to listen. That is why I have faithfully recorded so many of her words. 'It's about metal,' she said.

The USSR, she explained to me, was not only rotting apart, it was tipping over onto its side, so that all the pieces were falling out, like loose change being shaken from trouser pockets. And a lot of it was falling into Estonia. At the beginning, most of the metal was discarded or rusting junk from factories, but nowadays it was obsolete machinery, old cars and lorries, sometimes even whole ships. Estonians smashed them up and resmelted them, then sold the metals back again or else smuggled them out. And increasingly, it wasn't just junk being sold--it was arms, tanks, sometimes airplanes. All the military bases were being plundered, nearby Kaliningrad most of all. 'My family doesn't have much to do with any of this part of the business,' Maarit told me. 'My Finnish family, I mean. Coffee for me, spirits and cigarettes for the others, never narcotics. But Communism makes it impossible not to cheat, because it is based on unsound economics. For example, take sugar.'

'Sugar?' I thought she meant in my coffee.

'Yes, because of politics, the Russians subsidize the Cuban sugar cane industry. But the main product of Byelorussia is beet sugar, so importing it is impossible; instead it is distilled by the Cubans into cheap rum, which anyone can buy up for a few rubles all over the Eastern Bloc. So my family brings that in from Russia by the truckload, then ships it to Sweden and West Germany, where it's resold at high prices.'

'But how can you do that?' I asked her. The bus had been searched thoroughly at the border post at Nuijamaa; several of the Finnish farmers had openly wept as their contraband vodka bottles were poured out onto the road in front of them.

'What is the main legal export of the Soviet Union to Finland, aside from ore?' said Maarit.

'Wood?'

'Jaap. The Russians hollow out the logs and stuff liquor bottles inside them, then glue the logs back together. Probably two per cent of all lumber shipments are false ones. No one notices so long as they get paid off. Or so long as nobody gets killed. My grandfather was very upset about Gatchina--that's why I'm here.' She was right about my papers. When we docked, I wasn't even allowed off the ship. I spent a lousy night sleeping on a deck chair, then was returned to Helsinki the next morning. Maarit had smiled nastily at me in farewell, then tied on her canary yellow scarf and swaggered down the gangplank, her secret roll of dollars no doubt snug inside her vagina. I forced myself not to look after her. If I do, I thought, it will be like it was with Eurydice: she will never come back to me. This was the last time in my life, I think, that I have ever allowed myself to be superstitious. I do not believe in religion--or in magic. Maarit cured me of that.

Because, of course, she did return from Tartarus. On Monday night she telephoned. 'I'm home,' she said. 'But I can't talk. I'll see you on Friday.' But when she did, things were not quite the same between us. And I didn't know why. This feeling went on for many months, then changed and became better again--but too late to save us, as you will see. And the mystery? Oh yes, Cousin Märkko was quite honest about the killings; he had shot them. He said that he had good reasons--but would only tell them to Tiu, who afterwards agreed that, yes, his reasons were perfectly sound indeed and reflected well on the family. But that's all either of them would say on the subject, even to Peko, and it would have to be enough. Eventually, I suppose, word got back to the Russian gangs from the 'chicken-farmers' that Märkko had done it, then perhaps to the Police Militia of the Leningrad Oblast. Maybe a warrant was even put out for Märkko, who can say? But I doubt it. This is how mysteries are solved in the real world. But if you want to believe in the little old English ladies, go ahead. Maybe for you they are like the Norns.

Ok, now I have left the Angleterre pub. Outside on Frederikinkatu, feeling a bit dizzy from being inside drinking all day, I make a strange discovery: a very scary weather condition has fallen over the city, like a spell from an evil sorcerer. It is as though I have walked through a door into Mordor. The sky has darkened to the colour of a bruise, and a thick, choking haze has descended over the streets. Overhead, the dark clouds boil and churn as if in a cauldron; the sun bleeds through them like the red eye of Sauron. And on the sidewalks, bathed in this eerie half-light, everyone looks like characters from the 'Lord of the Rings'. I have noticed this more and more lately, anyway, that strangers increasingly resemble to me cartoons or figures from action films or TV commercials. I had assumed that this was a feature of travel--or perhaps of age on my part. But now, suddenly I am not so sure. Maybe it's the way they dress. The other day, for example, in Hawaii, I passed a five-foot tall young Mexican body-builder dressed exactly like a Star Trek Klingon, complete with body armour, who clanked as he walked. The world has gone quite mad, IMHO--so it's no surprise that the weather has, as well.

Two Finnish guys are standing there staring at me like they know me. They are strong fellows badly run to fat, both are about my height and age and look like they've been sleeping rough, as so many Finnish drunks do in the summer months in parks and dumpsters and lean-tos beside lakes. They are dressed like biker gang members in torn jeans and vests bearing faded regalia with the word 'Bandidos' sewn on them. The 'leader', the more talkative one, has a merry, open face stitched with laugh lines like an old football boot, and resembles Frodo's companion, the hobbit Sam Gamgee. He is missing a few teeth and is unshaven; unlike my designer stubble, his just looks like white toothbrush bristles all over his face and scalp. The other, the silent one, who has a long grey beard and shoulder-length hair, reminds me of Gimli the dwarf, with dark, scowling brows and a big nose. 'What's going on with the sky?' I ask them on an impulse in Finnish. They glance at each other.

'Don't you know?' Sam Gamgee replies after a minute. 'It's the Russians.'

'They've blown themselves up at last?'

'No, no, it's their forest fires. The smoke blows over here, straight from their arse-holes. They can't afford to pay fire-fighters to put them out, so this has been going on all summer, on and off.'

'I've been out of the country,' I tell them.

'You know, I could swear I've seen you somewhere before,' says the silent one unexpectedly. 'Didn't we do our "intti" together? In '71 maybe?' There is something just a little bit shifty in the way his eyes focus slightly to the side of me. Well, he is an alcoholic, obviously. They are always shifty. What can one expect???

'I did mine in '72,' I say, and they nod. Their names, they tell me, are Esa-Pekka and Stig. I tell them to call me Lemo, and they nod again and look at each other in bafflement. What's going on with these guys? Then, Esa-Pekka, the friendly hobbity one, asks me if I want to go drinking with them. He's had a bit of luck and is buying, he says. This is most curious of all. Friendly Finns? Willing to pay for drinks? Perhaps they are on some new government-approved anti-depressant pill, LOL.

'I have a little drinking problem,' I tell them. 'My problem is that I plan to drink continuously for the next 18 hours or so, but it's important that i don't fall asleep at any point. So I will stick to little drinks with lots of coffee. Keep me awake, and I'll pay for everything.' After a moment's consideration, this strikes both of them as a very admirable and worthy plan, and they are willing to fully commit themselves to it. But there is a secret reason for my sudden generosity; behind a crowd of Orc-like teenagers, I have just spotted the blue beret of the Gollum again. Now I have a Fellowship to protect me from his mad Master.

Besides, I will confess this to you--I like them. They are the first people I have met in many years I have felt immediately comfortable with. They remind me of 'Hietanen' and 'Koskela' in Vaino Linna's classic Finnish novel, 'The Unknown Soldier'. They are like a pair of old slippers; they get along with me very companionably. You think they are stupid and boring simply because they are a couple of old Finnish drunks? How wrong you would be. I will prove this to you. But we will have to wait until we are inside the next bar.

Left to their own devices, Esa-Pekka and Stig would no doubt stop at an Alko and buy cheap viina by the bag. But that does not suit me. Of course, I would save a great deal of money this way, but that would be a false economy. It is important as a health precaution that I drink the purest-proof viina along with a good class of coffee, and perhaps even a bit of food as well in order that I do not pass out puking again. So we must only drink at the best bars. This is based on sound scientific principles, I explain to them as we walk north on Frederikinkatu, and I can see at once that they are struck by my genius. Well, I must be modest; I apply my natural gift for introspective thinking to drinking as well as bonking. In my opinion, it is only a fool who does not learn important lessons from his actions, after repeating them over and over again for forty years.

'Why don't you want to fall asleep?' Esa-Pekka asks me, rather humbly.

'So that I don't lose control of myself and become some kind of crazy cannibal,' I tell him, and they both have a good laugh. But silently, of course, Finnish-style. It's good to be with my own kind again.

We turn on Eerinkatu to the Corona bar, which is also a billiards hall, and go inside. Now I am right back where I started, near the Torni again. It is a much hipper place than the other bars, judging from the music; they are playing the Pinker Tones' 'Million Colour Revolution'. 'This place is full of juppis,' complains Esa-Pekka. 'Yuppies', that is in English.

'Well, just do your best to fit in,' I tell him. I notice that while he's ordering at the bar, he makes a call on his Nokia cell-phone. From this distance, I can't hear what he's saying. Then he sets to work to woo the bar-girl with a shy, gap-toothed smile that makes his battered old face look surprisingly boyish.

'Typical of him,' the silent Stig suddenly tells me. 'Esa-Pekka and I have been pals since we were in nursery school together. He can charm the birds off the trees. Mind you, he has a very dark side to him--I live with my elderly mother, you see; she's disabled and has a heart condition, but I won't let him sleep on the couch.' He lowers his voice to a whisper, his sad, tired bloodhound eyes shifting from side to side. 'He's a hard man to live with, sometimes. It's the scorn, you see--the scorn...'

Esa-Pekka arrives with our first round, and while we wait for a table, we discuss science-fiction novels. Apparently he is a terrific reader of these, though his tastes appear to be in no way highbrow; he is a fan of Robert Heinlein and Philip Jose Farmer's 'Riverworld' series, which I've never read. He hates 'cyber-punk'. 'I can't make any sense of William Gibson,' he says, as we thread our way through a maze of pool tables to our booth. 'But hey, I'm a moron--I can't even turn on a computer, not even to read webmail, or whatever you call it.' He used to be a union electrician, but no longer works, probably because of habitual drunkenness. 'I kept electrocuting myself. Know what the most voltage I ever survived was? Easily 500 volts. H. R. Giger, the artist who created "Alien", used to fry himself just for fun.'

'"Alien" was the definitive science-fiction film,' adds Stig, who is apparently a great film buff. Yes, this fellow drowning like a troll in a foam of grey hair, his great beer belly hanging out of his tattered biker vest, collects film criticism magazines. He used to be a roofer, he has told me, but no longer works because of a bad back. Neither of them knows me well enough yet to tell me anything but the same sort of lies they tell social workers. Esa-Pekka has just begun to heap scorn on Stig's assertion about 'Alien' when suddenly I come face to face with Dr. Pretorius, who is wedged into a dark booth in the corner from which the central table has somehow been removed. A full meal is spread across a row of white linen napkins on the bench beside him.

'I must speak to you at once!' he hisses at me in French. 'Alone, if you please!'

'Perkele,' I say in Stadi, rolling my eyes. 'Mind if I talk to this guy for a few minutes? He's a harmless nutcase.'

'Hyee, he's a remarkable fatty,' Esa-Pekka replies ( 'jokinorsu'), and they find a table nearby where they can keep an eye on us.

'You took your time getting here,' Pretorius says, waving me to the seat across from him. 'Your life is in very great danger, Herr Likkanen. Those two are planning to kill you.'

I sigh and look at the ceiling. To watch this man eat is too disgusting. 'Come on, those two aren't killers. They couldn't scare a hen into laying an egg.'

'I'm afraid I see your death very clearly, as long as you remain in their company. The Invisibles have told me this very specifically. Listen, I know what you think of me. You think I am a madman, a figure of fun. You don't believe a word I say to you. But consider this, just for a moment or two--what if I am right, and you are wrong? What if magic really, truly exists? What if it actually works? This afternoon, when you went inside the English pub, the rain had stopped and the sun had come out, yes? Yet, by the time you left it, the skies were dark and filled with smoke. I summoned this darkness as a shield for my occultation.'

'For what?' I say. 'Occultation' is too much for my French. Why were we speaking it anyway?

'To make myself hidden on the astral plane to the warlock who rules over Finland; before, he could see everywhere here. "Tuuslar" is our name for him in the Chantry. But you know him far better than we do, I think.' He leans forward. 'He is the demon who seduced your wife, Likki, or "Linda" as we call her.'

I find that I, who thought myself free from any embarrassment on this subject, have flushed bright red. But perhaps it is merely from anger, I decide with relief. Yes, I have definitely lost my temper. A tantrum is very much in order here. 'I've had enough of this,' I hear myself saying, as if from a very great distance. 'Goodbye, Pretorius.'

'Six million. I will pay you six million Euros if you drop everything and come back to Stockholm with me right now. Please. Herr Likkanen, I am begging you,' says the fat man, starting to sweat. His pink forehead is shining with it. He appears to mean every single insane word he is saying. 'I'll be perfectly honest with you--whether you live or die matters not so much to me, though of course, personally, I wish to see the line of Frederik Wilander continue to the ultimate greatness that is destined for it. According to the Invisibles, your own son will usher in a new age on Earth in 2012. But my principal wish is to preserve the book inside your safe deposit box. If you die, that will be lost to us forever.'

'"A new age on Earth"?' I ask him, so distracted by his words that i actually forget to be angry. 'You mean like...like the Age of Aquarius?'

'Well, actually, yes. The Sixth Sun prophesied by the Mayas, in fact. Do you know anything about the precession of the planets?' This I ignore.

'What's in this book, exactly?'

'I'm afraid it would be dangerous for me to tell you that. In fact, one of the stipulations I must insist on is that you hand it over to me without looking at it. It is the most dangerous document in existence. And I can tell you this much--when you die, it will more than likely end up in the hands of Tuuslar.'

'I'm sorry,' I tell him. 'This conversation, it is finished.'

Dr. Pretorius rises to his feet heavily, and extricates himself from the booth, his feet careful not to touch any of the cracks on the flooring. He takes his cape from a wooden coat-hook on the post beside him, and swings it around his shoulders like a conjurer about to perform a trick. I notice they are speckled with dandruff.

'Who is your next of kin, Herr Likkanen? Who stands to gain the most from your death? Think about it. I'll talk to you again later tonight.' And he turns to lumber off like a dancing hippo past the pool players and out into the occultated night. I stand staring at the remains of his meal; he has obviously been sitting here eating it for at least an hour; he has even had dessert. How did he know I was coming here in the first place? How does he know I even speak French? And what was all that he said about Likki--'or "Linda", as we call her'? Since when has my marital life been common knowledge in Sweden--and since when has Likki had her very own Swedish name? For the first time, I am beginning to have that feeling of the Japanese poet again, that vague feeling of trepidation. I shake my head angrily to try to clear it and then rejoin Esa-Pekka and Stig, who now seem to me now to be my best friends on this earth--and very, very sane, as well. Well, stands to reason, doesn't it? They are sensible Finns, not crazy Swedes. I feel a surge of affection toward them. I am dying anyway, so if these two stout lads decide to kill me, well, perhaps they are really just doing me a big favour. Doing the whole world a favour, in fact. Who better to row me across the dark waters of Tuonela into the underground Land of the Dead than a pair of my own Finnish brothers? Besides, I think, having a good swallow of viina, Dr. Pretorius was quite wrong about one thing: I have no next of kin. These Invisibles of his apparently don't know everything.

'French fellow, eh,' says Esa-Pekka, when I sit down beside him. 'My favourite French film is the "Fifth Element".'

'That's not really French, it just has a French director,' Stig says. 'I prefer that guy Godard, who made--what was it called--"Alphaville"? And "La Jetee". I've read they're part of some film movement called "Nuvoo Vaaku" or something. What's that mean in Finnish?"

'"Uusi Aika",' I reply. This is a joke--I have translated this as 'New Age'. OK, OK, it's hard to be funny in two languages. Or even one. IMHO, it is always a bad idea to learn a second language at all, really. Perhaps it is OK for women, they are natural actresses, but consider how you appear to others as a man when you are trying to speak a foreign tongue: French, let us say. You stand there with a stupid grin on your face like a baboon, bowing and pretending to understand what the other person is saying, looking like some moronic servile bell-boy waiting for a tip. It is no wonder that Parisians have nothing but contempt for the African and American students, for example, who behave in this fashion; by now the French have become used to such obsequiousness, which explains the madness of Chirac and de Villepin. Far better to act as the English, who expect everyone else to learn their language. This earns the respect of all. Of course, that is not possible for a Finn, so when we are abroad we are forced to act like mimes or clowns. It stands to reason, therefore, that we are mostly silent fellows. But not when we are drinking in bars.

'I can't believe you refuse to admit that "Twelve Monkeys" is a better remake!' Esa-Pekka is saying combatively to Stig. At first I think this is an act they are putting on for my benefit, but later I am to learn that, no, this is really how the two of them spend all their time together--arguing about anything they've ever seen on TV. Films, sports, game-shows, even commercials; it doesn't matter. It is a kind of Biblical interpretation, a bickering over arcane lore ever since day-care, I guess. They are like an old married couple. Yet they are true Finns, so they are not gay-blades. Sometimes they even seem ready to come to blows over some obscure point of this lore. 'Stig gets everything wrong anyway,' he is saying to me now. 'He's an even bigger moron than me. We didn't do our military service in '71, it was '72. So maybe we were all together at Porkkalan niemi for boot camp.'

'Maybe,' I said. But, strangely, I don't remember them at all. Of course, I was there with Bjorn. Like the true friend, he had taken off a year from his studies to volunteer for his service at the same time I was forced to have mine. In fact, all that summer he was determined to get us both into the proper physical shape for boot camp; making me wake up early to go running every morning and even give up cigarettes to improve our wind, though of course I cheated like mad whenever I was with Maarit. Naturally, I had dreaded their meeting at all after the disaster with my parents, and so kept them apart as long as I could, but when they did meet at last, he was had nothing but compliments to say about her after, though they argued constantly over politics.

'She's not like your other girls,' he told me. 'Especially that bitch Stina. Maarit's got a fine head on her shoulders. What's more, she really understands Capitalism.' From Bjorni, the devout neo-Marxist, this was the highest praise possible. Nonetheless, I felt a sting of jealousy hearing it. I had no proof of course, and she had never admitted to even kissing another guy on any of her weekends away, but I still couldn't really trust her, not even with Bjorni. Who obviously was 'smitten' by her. Well, luckily, I thought to myself, he would be stuck with me inside a military barracks for the next six weeks. He was even more worried than I at the prospect. Bjorni was convinced that we, being effeminate Helsinki Finland-Swedes, would be humiliated and beaten up by tough drill sergeants or a gang of Savo farm-boys, so he constantly practiced his boxing on me and every few days would produce some new trick for self-defense. 'Did you know you can splinter a man's nose with the heel of your palm--' (here he would demonstrate) '--and drive the jagged splinters into his brain?' Or, 'Did you know the best way to disable an opponent is to suddenly clap him over both ears at once--like this?'

I would not want you to think from this, however, that I was some sort of shy, sensitive, poetic weakling, like the heroes of so many modern novels. Not at all. Likkanen hates poetry. Likkanen despises sensitivity--except, of course, for his cosmical, almost supernatural, awareness of the many emotional and sexual moods of chicks. I often feel that I am rather like a human 'mood-ring' where women are concerned. But any other kind of sensitivity is strictly for the gay blades, though of course one cannot say that out loud these days, especially in New York. So I have found it wise to stay au courant with all the latest sensitive metrosexual language by occasionally reading womens' magazines; such jargon changes so often, you see, that it is hard to keep abreast. And, naturally, I often eavesdrop on conversations at Starbucks.

After all, I rarely have anything better to do these days.

Next time: In the Army.

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Don Juan in Helsinki: 23

The next morning after we saw the first part of 'Solyaris', Maarit and I caught the train from Leningrad to the suburb of Gatchina, which lies south of Pulkovo Aeroport. Maarit had an appointment there with someone at an illegal trading market, where she would also meet her cousin Märkko from Estonia, which was less than 100 kilometres away. On the train I read a description of the town and its famous lake and palace from the only Finnish guidebook to Leningrad I had been able to find before we left. Gatchina sounded to me a bit like Haga Park in Stockholm, near to where my grandfather lived: ''Its marble walls were built to reflect the colour of the surroundings. In the summer sun they appear to be a warm gold, in the rains of winter a steely blue."'

'Well forget it, because we aren't going anywhere near the palace,' she said, as we left the railway station huddled under her red umbrella, ' This is just a business trip, so it's OK to buy cheap rubbish, but nothing else. We aren't here to take any stupid risks.'

'Then what are we here for?' I was not complaining, you understand; I was well content to share her umbrella. Jammed up beside mine beneath it, her body smelled of coffee, coal-tar soap, warm wet wool, and sex. This far from the sea, the rain had slowed to a steady drizzle. It was, according to the clerk at the front desk, 8 C on this day in late July. We could see our breaths.

'To fix shipment prices and dates with the Russian gangs. If this were a normal country, we could arrange it all by postcard or personal newspaper ads, but because it is still always Stalingrad here, deals have to be made with a handshake and drink of vodka. These are very backward, primitive people. It is important to them that they meet you in person, so that they can kill you later, if they have to. Of course, that doesn't make for good business.'

'But is it safe for you?' I asked, suddenly worried.

'Oh yes. My family is very old and well-connected, you see. Besides, I am just the little messenger girl. Nothing bad can happen to me here.' I was not so sure. We were walking northwest on Chekhov Street, a wide boulevard lined with eucalyptus trees and large white buildings that had, even in this weather, an oddly tropical French look, like a shabby old neighborhood of Nice or Cannes. Its mansions, streaked with soot and grime, were all schools now, or police stations, a local party headquarters, or Red Army training posts; once it had been a summer retreat for millionaires, an artists' colony, and, according to my guidebook, Imperial Russia's most 'cosmopolitan small city', filled with Germans, Swedes, and even Finns. Likely we were the only Finns who had seen it in some years--and we were certainly attracting many hard stares as we approached the apartment towers of the workers' housing estate. We turned left onto a street marked 'Radischeva'. On an abandoned muddy lot on the corner a group of young street toughs were listlessly kicking about a football so sodden it had burst apart and from a distance resembled a human head. One of these thugs spotted us and ran over to us, saying something in Russian. His hair was carefully greased back like Elvis Presley. He ogled my clothes as if they were a woman.

'He says he'll guide us there,' said Maarit. 'This part of the city is called "Zagvozdka"--that means "Big Trouble".'

'Wonderful,' I said.

'Well, literally, "Tough-As-Nails-Town".' The foot-traffic was picking up around us, the streets full of hurrying middle-aged men in translucent black nylon raincoats and women in bright scarves who might have been the cleaning ladies from the hotel. Everyone was smoking. There were a few younger girls, too, in day-glo pancake make-up and mini-skirts. Up close, it could be seen that the tenement blocks were quite new, perhaps built in the '60s, but already they looked as if they'd been shelled during the war. There was graffiti painted everywhere. The black market, or 'rynok', was in a paved arcade between two blocks of towers, and was packed with people of many different ethnic appearances, all of them dressed very badly. It was like a miniature USSR, I thought. Originally it had been created to house real shops, it seemed, but since there were none, the fronts were either boarded up or plastered over with party propaganda posters. In front of them were makeshift stalls and tables selling vegetables or dead chickens, but most activity was apparently being conducted by word of mouth. A man with no legs sat sleeping like a Hindu ascetic on a mat covered with toilet paper rolls and turnips. Next to him were strung clotheslines from which rows of spark-plugs dangled like clothespins. Maarit stopped at a folding table and bought a canary-yellow scarf from an old woman with no teeth. "Like it?' she asked me, tying it over her short black hair.

'You look like a real babuschka now,' I said.

'Well, I love it. I think it might even be real silk. You can get anything here if the traders have it in stock. Today it's Western make-up and underwear, I think--Russians hate Soviet underwear because it's made for one sex and one size.' This image was not deeply erotic to me. 'So you can see, if we can smuggle it here, we can sell anything. The problem is finding something to exchange, because the ruble is worthless. But you'd be surprised.' And so I was. So were we both, in fact. Our guide turned the corner into a covered concrete passage and gestured at a side door to one of the papered-over shops.

'Tuda,' he said, and Maarit gave him a handful of cigarettes. The door was unlocked. We went inside; there was no one there.

'What do we do now?' I said.

'We wait,' she said, looking at her watch. 'I'm a bit late. That's your fault, for keeping me awake all night.' The big room was in twilight, lit only by the gloomy daylight leaking in from the covered show-windows in front. By it I could see stacks and stacks of folded string shopping bags, some waist-high. The walls were covered from counter-top to ceiling with square medical X-rays with dark circles in the middle: skulls, chest cavities, crania, pelvic girdles, other anatomical parts I could not identify, and so I moved nearer toward them to stare.

'We used to bring those in, too,' Maarit said. 'We'd buy them from hospitals and clinics.'

'X-ray plates? Whatever for? They're useless once they're exposed.'

'Not here,' she said. 'Ten years ago, the "roentgenizdat" used to turn them into jazz phonograph records by pressing grooves on them. Nothing goes to waste in this country. This place might have been an underground music shop.' Something on the floor behind a counter caught my eye. A boot. Beside it was another boot. Both were attached to a body lying on the floor. I walked around the counter and saw there were two bodies lying there side by side with the slightly disjointed look of discarded dolls. Both were men in their forties with dark moustaches like Freddy Mercury of 'Queen', and both appeared snappily dressed. One had half-curled up on his side, but the other lay sprawled on his back with his face lolling toward me, his open mouth full of gold teeth, a blossom of dark blood staining his groin, and a single black bullet-hole between his eyes. Both corpses had defecated in dying, and up close, stank of shit.

I heard a sharp gasp behind me. 'Märkko!' Maarit said. 'Oh God, I feel sick.'

'This is your cousin Märkko?'

'No, no, Märkko did this. The lying prick set me up to finger these two for him.' Her face had drained completely of all colour, and she swayed on her feet. I caught her arm.

'It might not have been Märkko. It might have been...anybody. The KGB. Or, I don't know, Uzbeks.'

'No, it's Estonian-style. Right ball, left ball, then bang between the eyes.'

From outside I heard the distant, unmistakable sound of police sirens; a moment later, someone pounded on the front door and shouted, 'Blya, menty!' Maarit didn't move. She closed her eyes; she was shivering, and her face was bathed in sweat.

'Come on,' I said, 'We have to get out of here.' I dragged her out the way we'd come in and was almost bowled over by a group of fleeing housewives. We followed them down the passageway and out into an alley behind the apartment block. Maarit seemed about to faint, but revived a bit in the rain--somehow, we had managed to leave our umbrella behind. We had walked about two blocks away when she suddenly stopped and leaned over, breathing shallowly. 'I'm sorry,' she said. 'I'm acting like a complete girl, aren't I? The thing is, you see, I've never seen anything like that before.'

'It's OK,' I told her. 'It's very upsetting.'

'Look at you, though, you're being really brave.' She sounded almost resentful. Just then, Elvis peddled up to us on a bike. He braked and spoke in Russian to Maarit, his eyes flicking back and forth between us.

'He wants our money,' she said. 'Give him whatever you have.' I had a pocketful of rubles and a few Finnish markkas, which I handed to him in silence. He said something more.

'Now he says he wants our clothes.'

'What?'

'Just give him your jacket, that's what he's really after,' Maarit told me, taking hers off. It was a 'blue-jean' jacket, real American Levis. I gave it to him reluctantly. 'Don't worry, I'll buy you a new one.' Elvis carefully put it in a shopping bag, then insisted on taking her watch as well before he pedaled off.

'He's going to turn us in anyway,' I said miserably, cold rain beginning to trickle down the small of my back.

'No, he won't--he'd have to give our stuff up to the militia if he did. That watch of mine is crap, but he can buy himself a motorbike with your jacket.' We turned the corner into the next street, and suddenly there he was again.

'Saatana!' I exclaimed, losing my temper. 'What, has he come back for my pants? This is straight from the arse-hole!' Beside me, Maarit gave a weak giggle. Elvis stood there for a moment or two, legs astride his bicycle, looking at us with a slightly shamefaced expression, then handed us each a crisply folded black nylon raincoat. I put mine on after he had disappeared for good. I had cut off most of my long hair before meeting Maarit's family (it was going to have to go anyway when I reported for military service in a month); now she pushed a damp lock of it off my forehead.

'You're starting to look almost Russian,' she said. 'I've never heard you curse before. It's cute.'

'What do we do now?' I asked her. 'He took all our money.' Our passports were back at the hotel; we had been given grimy photocopies. My guidebook had fallen into a rain-gutter, and I felt an irrational panic at the sight, as if I were somehow saying goodbye to the last of my Finnishness.

'Oh God,' she said, starting to tremble again. 'This is so embarrassing, Lemo. Don't look at me.' Her teeth began to chatter, clacking loudly against each other, and she retreated into a little alley behind a mound of rusting containers. I watched her pull off her panties and squat down. When, after a time, she came back looking very little better, she sat down heavily against a low brick wall. A passerby stared at her curiously.

'I always carry a roll of dollars around with me inside a certain place.' She peeled out a few five-dollar bills from a little plastic sandwich bag and handed them to me. 'A certain place you have visited many times. I'm sorry, I'm feeling too sick to move right now. There's a "Vinnyj' on the corner, see it? Go inside and buy me a bottle of vodka, just say "Stoli, Stoli", OK? Don't accept anything else. Make sure the seal is unbroken and on very tight, we don't want to poison ourselves with "samogon". Oh,' she added as I began to walk away, 'See if you can buy yourself something to eat in there. It's going to be a long walk back.'

When I returned with the Stolichnaya, she opened the bottle at once and began sipping from it. 'It's the shock. This is the first time anything like this has ever happened to me. Always before it was just like a game, you know?' I nodded. She staggered to her feet, and we walked slowly north and east to the 25th of October Avenue. A police Zhiguli with flashing lights roared past us down the middle of the road, followed by two black vans; we turned and continued on in the direction they'd come from, trying our best to walk like Russians. The rain was beginning to come down harder, so this was easy enough--we were hunched against the downpour like a pair of half-drowned rats (BTW, I have noticed that this 'look' is now quite fashionable these days in Manhattan for both men and women--they appear to comb their hair with stinky cologne to achieve it. Sometimes I think no one bonks from real attraction any more but just as part of some sort of hazing ritual.) Inside the liquor store I had stuffed my pockets full of a candy bar called 'Kaka-o'; these claimed to be chocolate but tasted fairly much like their name.

'What exactly happened back there?' I asked her, trying to choke one of the Kakas down. The vodka helped a bit with this.

'I'm not sure exactly. Märkko is in a gang called the "Saha-Loo'--that means the "chicken farmers"--maybe they took a contract from the Kambov gang here in Leningrad, to kill those guys we saw back there. Or maybe not. Maybe something just went wrong. Or perhaps it was a hit ordered by the Estonian Defense League; they are very closely connected. One thing is for sure,' she said, taking the bottle back. 'Nothing Märkko does is his own idea. He's really conceited and stupid. He takes all his orders from his sister Tiu, who is the toughest girl I know. These are my real cousins, you understand, not just business cousins--they are the children of my mother's older sister. She married an Estonian named Peko Silves, a friend of my grandfather.'

'This Estonian Defense League,' I said. 'Aren't they like...?"

''Japp, they're like Nazis.' She took the bottle from me, put it to her lips, and swallowed hard. 'Next weekend I'll have to go to Tartu and talk to them.' We kept walking for about an hour up to Leningradskaya before catching a local bus that, after a long whimsical detour through a labyrinth of roads around the aeroport, finally got us back to the city. The next day we returned to Finland; at the border the sun finally came out.

Next time: Eurydice in Tartarus

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Don Juan in Helsinki: 22

'All Russian weather begins here in the Baltic, then blows to Moscow where it meets the Arctic winds and gets churned up just like in an ice machine. Do you know why?' We were inside the Hermitage Museum pretending to look at famous paintings; earlier we had stood under an umbrella just outside and pretended to gaze at the famous Peter and Paul Fortress across the water, which was still, it was said, used as a KGB prison. Maarit had declared that, despite the weather, we would at least act like tourists for the rest of the afternoon. It was like the old joke about Soviet salaries, she said: '"We pretend to work, and you pretend to pay us." They pretend there are sights here to see, and we will pretend to see them.' It was fun, like playing at being spies. Maarit had the knack of making everything a game. On weekends, anyway.

'No, why?' I said now.

'Because the earth spins east to west, of course. Didn't they teach you anything at your fancy school?'

'Just how to pretend to work,' I said. 'And how to lie to our teachers and parents.'

'But not how to lie in Russian,' she said. 'I can only lie in a foreign language, never in Finnish. I think that's why I like to learn languages. Each time I do, it's as if I've become a whole different person, like an actress.'

'Perkele,' I muttered. I didn't want another Stina. I had already become addicted to Maarit's blunt honesty. It was remarkable, though at times quite painful, to be with a girl who always told you the truth. We stopped at the cafeteria for the worst food, followed by the worst coffee, I had ever had. Maarit refused hers after the first few tastes.

'Never mind, the hotel will have better. It will have to have. At least this cost us nothing, since we paid in rubles. Have you ever seen a Russian film?'

'Only "Alexander Nevsky",' I replied, after some thought. 'The one where the German knights drop the babies in the fire.'

'Let's go to the cinema tonight. Maybe there will be something more interesting playing. I'll translate it for you.' And that was how we happened to go to see 'Solyaris', the famous science-fiction film by Andrei Tarkovsky. In those days, not every Russian had a TV set, so films like this were shown on successive nights in two-hour segments. This meant that we had to also come back the next evening (after another dreadful supper; by the time we returned to Helsinki my gums ached, and my teeth felt loose from eating the Russian food) to see the second part. We sat in the dark together in the front row watching this story of a man who cannot escape his dead wife, who has been revived from his memories by an alien planet as a method of communicating with him. Beside me, Maarit whispered constantly: 'Now she is saying that she has no memory of the past, now she is begging him to tell her if he still loves her...' It was like dying or being born again, to sit in darkness staring with wide eyes at a bright, blazing mysterious new world, having it explained in whispers by the voice of the woman one loved. Did I say I had never again been so happy as on that night with Matty and Stina? I was wrong. I was happiest in Leningrad with Maarit.

And it was this very same film Solyaris that caused me to bonk my very first Russian babe. Now this is something you must know about me: even though I am a most liberal fellow when it comes to bonking all attractive young women of every race and nation of origin, still I have never cared for the Russian ones. They are like English girls; not so terribly clean downstairs. And perhaps it is the bad food, but all of them seem to become very stout and unattractive rather soon in life. The staff of the Hotel Sovietskaya, for example, aside from the KGB men, was almost completely cleaning ladies who looked like sumo wrestlers in nurses' kit and sat in a sullen group inside a closet at the end of the corridor, chain-smoking and trading dentures. The younger ones on the streets of the city were more slender of course, but they dressed badly and wore bright make-up like clowns. It is not such an easy thing to do, but they managed to make even Finnish girls look chic. So for these reasons, Likkanen had no interest in them. In fact, I had never bonked any Russian women before 1979 or so. By then many had emigrated to the West and learned how to dress and wash themselves, like gorillas in captivity.

But in spite of this I had remained in love with Soviet-bloc cinema. And to be perfectly fair, even Tarkovsky preferred to use Armenian actresses, who are very lovely women and quite bonkable, in his films. I think it was 1979, perhaps it was 1980, when his 'Stalker' was finally released in Paris, as part of a 'Soviet Science-Fiction Film Festival' at a movie theatre on the rue des Rennes. It is gone now. It was not the 'Grande' or the 'Galande'--what was it called? The 'Metropol'? I cannot remember. For years I kept the playbill and the schedule, but they are lost. If you know this, please post a message on this blog. This cinema was quite near to me at that time because I was then living in a rented flat at St. Sulpice, in fact, directly beneath a large one owned by Catharine Deneuve. And no, in reply to your natural question, I was never fortunate enough to bonk with this lovely, tragically vulnerable actress and French national sex symbol, though on the two occasions we shared a ride in the lift, she snubbed me most rudely, which is what one expects and even desires from a beautiful star of her magnitude. In some ways, that is even better than a bonk, because the memory of it stays with you longer. The little flat I had had formerly been rented to a 'Miss Kitkat', a Turkish airlines hostess; all that year, at any hour of the day or night, the telephone would ring and guttural male Muslim voices would say, 'Allo, Miss Kitkat, s'il vous plait?' Often they would not take 'non' for an answer and would attempt to forcibly negotiate a price with me. To this day, I cannot even look at the candy bar of the same name without shuddering. Sometimes I would then launder the bedclothes again (and wipe off the receiver with alcohol) after such a phone call, out of sheer hypochondria. Anyhoo, this film festival was showing three films a day for 10 days; not even I had the time or stamina to see them all. Aside from 'Stalker,' I recall quite clearly 'The Savage Hunt of King Stakh' (http://www.russiandvd.com/store/product.asp?sku=41217&aid=6729), the Strugatskys' 'Dead Mountaineer Hotel' (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0204526/), which was Estonian, and Lem's 'Test Pilot Pirx' (http://movies.yahoo.com/movie/1809357531/info), which was Polish. The highlight of this last was a scene where the rocket-ships, which had foolishly been filmed horizontally rather than vertically, all had their exhaust flames curling upward from gravity, which made the audience laugh. Well, they were used to 'Star Wars', I suppose.

The theatre was large and cavernous and had once been quite grand, with dark mauve velvet walls, art-deco sconces and railings, and marble bathrooms. Unfortunately, these were so poorly maintained that while I was pissing after watching 'Pirx', which was quite a long movie, the overhead cistern cracked and soaked me with a flood of water. Outside, it was one of those bright, sharply cool days that occasionally race through Paris in the autumn, and I stood shivering and dripping under the marquee with a group of photographers, who were there to snap some expatriate Russian celebrity or other; the theatre served as a sort of cultural centre for the Slavic exile community. A wave of Algerian terror bombings had recently hit the rue des Rennes, so the street was fenced off by a row of grilled metal crowd barriers. As I debated whether or not to try to dash the four or so blocks home in the cold (though of course this was quite pleasant weather for a true Finn), a taxi-cab pulled up directly in front of these, and a very tall, very glamourous young tinsel-haired woman in a brown sable fur coat got out and looked about, scowling. 'You!' she said with a dramatic Russian accent, pointing at me. 'Pay this man at once!' This was Batgirl.

In Paris in those days, there was a class of people, usually foreign, who existed only to be noticed. Some of these wanted to be actors, some clothes designers, some musicians, some merely wanted to become generic celebrities. And this could happen in an instant in that city, and quite often it did. I will give you an example. Not far from me on D'Assas lived a rich young Dutch fellow from a wealthy family, what we would nowadays call a 'Trustafarian'. He and his wife were also terrific hippies; I would often see them shopping at the Vie Claire on Raspail or Le Jardin on the rue du Bac. They would eat only biotically-grown grains and vegetables. They were both quite handsome people with very blonde long hair (she wore hers in flaxen braids) and fancied themselves clothes-makers; they would always be dressed in their latest creations, which were sewn together from bits of bright coloured felt and rather resembled what you might see worn by small children at a 'Renaissance Fair'. And in every sort of weather, rain or sunshine, he always wore a little gilt-edged pill-box hat that he had made himself from stiff felt and brocade. He wore this ghastly thing every day of his life for three or four years, until one night, I saw him at a 'Zoom Magazine' party in the Dixieme chatting up a few lady fashion critics. He was also pimping his wife (whom I ended taking home that night; she turned out to be quite charming, despite her unshaven legs, and was an expert at organic Tantric sexual techniques), but since all the male fashion people there were gay blades, he was a bit out of luck there. No good ever comes to anyone from bonking Likkanen. Nonetheless, the next week his stupid hat was in all the magazines, and a month later it was in the window of Galeries Lafayette. Because those writers who work at magazines have very little imagination. They are easily hypnotized by any bright new thing that is dangled in front of their eyes. Sometimes a single glimpse on a Paris sidewalk is enough to make a career. I have seen this happen with woollen caps from Ecuador and cheap red Korean ear-muffs sold by street-vendors, as well. And, of course, often with beautiful young women like Batgirl.

Normally, when I bonk a babe, I have to think up a nickname for her as an aide-memoire. This can be quite a chore! Not so with this one. 'You can call me Batgirl,' she said. Well, not just to me, but to the photographers as well, who were now all madly snapping her picture. She had leaned back against the cab and struck a pose, which caused her sable to shift enough so that one could see that underneath it she was wearing nothing but black stockings and garters. I could not help but notice that her hair was not naturally tinsel. She was a very big girl, looking a little like the tennis player Maria Sharapova, but with paler skin and finer bones and more graceful from her training as a prima ballerina. Her first name was perhaps Galina or Ludmila or Alexandra or something, but her patronymic was 'Batkovna', so she told everyone to just call her Batgirl. God only knows what her last name was; I'm sure she changed it every few months. But now, while I bargained with her Senegalese driver to take me home, she suddenly stared at me as if thunderstruck. 'Where are you going?' she demanded.

'Home. Before I catch a cold,' I said.

'OK, I will go with you,' she said, getting back into the taxi and slamming the door. 'I am a good nurse.'

I clambered in beside her while she continued to stare at me, her pupils dilated like those of a feral animal in the dark. Had I met her somewhere before? 'Are you married?' she asked suddenly, lighting one of my damp cigarettes.

'No.'

'That's too bad. I prefer to be with couples--I like it to have a woman wait on me. But in this case, I will be with you only, because I'm a little bit in love with you already,' she went on, with the greatest sincerity. 'It happens to me this way sometimes. I had an orgasm when I first saw you, without even touching myself. How do you say, a spon...spon...'

'"Spontaneous'?' I suggested.

'Yes, yes, spontaneous. I am always very spontaneous. This has only happened to me twice before, so don't laugh at me. You should feel very, how do you say...'

'Honoured?'

She stuck out her tongue at me. 'No,' she said, blowing smoke at me. 'Scared!' In that moment, something about her manner reminded me of Maarit, so I took her home. Perhaps they were cousins. Or perhaps it was just having smoke blown at me. Or, as my dear friend Lou would say, blown up my ass.

The rest of the week we watched Russian films in the day and made hot squishy monkeys all night. Batgirl's sexual technique was simple, and basically it was the same one that she employed for every other activity, like eating or telling a joke; whatever she did, she tried to do it to death. I think this was something very primal from her Slavic heritage as a huntress and herder of livestock. It took a real man to please Batgirl, and I am proud to say that I survived it. But it was about this time that I decided to move to New York. The problem with Batgirl was that aside from making monkeys, she did not actually want to do anything else in life, except eat candy bars and watch TV and films. She had no interest in pursuing her career as a ballet dancer, saying only that she was already 'too old and fat for serious parts'. The one time I got her out of the flat on a grocery shopping trip to Inno, she bought a stack of Elles and Vogues, which she then flipped through indignantly for the next few days. 'I am much prettier than her!' she would exclaim contemptuously. 'I am sexier than this one!' She would then tear the offending page out and throw it on the floor, which soon became covered with debris. As she watched TV, her lips would move with those of the actors, her eyes would well up with tears, or her face would turn bright red while she laughed hysterically. This got even worse when we were watching 'Stalker' at the theatre, for instance, though luckily there were not so many laughs in that film, so she merely wept her way through it noisily. Hearing Russian again, she said, made her particularly emotional. Then why had she ever left, I asked her.

'Oh,' she snarled, 'It is a terrible shit-hole!'

One night while she was alternately shrieking and sobbing her way through a Louis de Funes comedy on FR2, I slipped out for a walk. I needed to think. In Stockholm, where I had lived for several years before moving to Paris, I had been friends with several musicians in the folk-rock bands 'Tretiarkriget' ('Thirty Years' War') and 'Knebnakajse' (the name of a famous Swedish mountain peak). One of these, a guitarist, lived with his wife in a big group house in Bromma, along with a bunch of other hippies, including a medical student. One day the medical student brought a big blonde puppy home. At first everyone loved the little monster, but it kept getting bigger and bigger, until it was eating everything in sight. In addition, it could not be paper-trained; my friend's wife soon spent most of her time either feeding it or cleaning up after it. Then the medical student decided he was sick of the animal and wanted to have it put to death. Naturally, being a tender-hearted chick, my friend's wife refused. The last time I saw the poor fellow, he had quit his gig with the band and he, his wife, and the huge monster dog were moving out to the country. I realized that this was exactly my situation with Batgirl. She was not a human being, she was simply a big blonde pet. Soon she would eat everything inside my flat. Either I would have to have her put to sleep--or else take her with me everywhere I went in life, even to New York. Though she would likely have to be kept in quarantine for several months first.

But I had forgotten that Russian wolfhounds don't just bark, sometimes they bite. And they always run in packs. There was a human one following me now across St. Sulpice on my way back home. The Place was brightly lit for the tourists, which is pretty but very annoying if your windows overlook it; by the pink sodium vapour glare I saw his sharp face quite clearly. He was dressed like a clochard and had a dark stubble of beard. How did I know he was Russian? He looked like he'd been murdered the week before but had somehow survived the autopsy. He was just too nasty to die. He stood in front of me now, blocking my way. 'Want her?' he said in bad French.

I shook my head. We both knew who he was talking about. 'Nyet, komandir,' I said, thinking of Leningrad. 'You can have her back.' He gave me a very hard stare and flicked cigarette ash at me. I knew that trick.

'Either way it will cost you the same,' he said.

'Forget it,' I said. 'Wait here and I'll send her down to you. All she does is eat.'

'Don't fuck with me, pédé, or I'll hurt you. A lot,' he said, raising his voice sharply. 'Really, it's cheaper for you just to pay me off.' This was a mistake on his part, to say 'vraiment'. It's not something real gangsters say, not even in France. He took me for a Swede, but I was actually a Finn. You see? Again, the wrong dog. So I head-butted him very suddenly, and his nose exploded. Then I kicked him hard in the groin. Well, I was in a bad mood anyway, and this made for a nice distraction. For a Russian, he was not so very tough, but I suppose living in the West had done that to him. Also, he was very likely a heroin addict, since he was also clearly a pimp. A pimp who was very bad at his job, I thought. Perhaps he was a dissident poet; these were always popping up in New York in the '80s. I made sure he had no gun and threw his switch-blade clasp knife down a drain. Then I left him there for some American tourists to rescue. It is tempting in a situation like this to have the last word, like the tough guys in the movies. It is just like dumping a woman; for hours after one's head is full of clever remarks. But take it from me, it is always best to walk away in silence and never look back. It is the Finnish way. It makes for finality. Or 'closure', as the magazines say. I felt that he and I had achieved this. But with Batgirl, it might be a bit more tricky.

Upstairs, Louis de Funes, wearing a Catholic cardinal's robes, had just jumped off a balcony into a manure pit, much to her delight. Well, this simple childlike pleasure was a great part of her charm--I could not resent it. "I met a guy outside who says he knows you,' I said to her. 'A Russian guy.' French has an excellent word for guy: 'mec'. Almost as cool as 'dude', I think.

'It has nothing to do with me,' she said, without taking her eyes from the screen.

'Is he your husband?'

'No, no! He is just some low-life scum-bag I did a few favours for once; now he thinks he owns me. He is always following me around making trouble.' But her mood was spoiled. The rest of the evening she was quite cross, and the next afternoon, she said, 'Why don't you go to the cinema by yourself today? I'm not feeling so very good.'

'Then I'll stay home with you.' I replied. 'I am a good nurse.' Ha!

'No, no, you go. I want to spend some time by myself.'

'That's just the illness talking. Besides, "Solyaris" is playing; I have seen it three times already.'

'What about "Aelita"?'

'I hate silent films,' I told her. 'Just stay in the bed, and I'll make you some soup. It may not taste very good, though--we are running short on groceries.'

Over the next two days, Batgirl grew more and more restless and angry. At one point, she even screamed at me, 'Why can't you just leave me alone? Why won't you just go out, you bastard?' She used the word 'crapule', which I have always had a very great affection for, since it sounds like 'krapula' in Finnish. So I just I pointed out, very reasonably, I thought, that it was actually my flat we were in. 'Well, why is there never anything to eat then?' she said and burst into tears. I think, in retrospect, this was a sign she actually felt some affection for me and was sorry at the direction our relationship had taken. Or perhaps she was just getting very hungry.

I gave her an embarrassed smile. 'No money,' I said. 'I'm sure my mother will send me a cheque on the first of the month--then I'll take you to the 'Tour d'Argent".' Until then, I almost said, we can live on love, but I didn't want to overdo it. The next morning she was gone, along with the television set. Which was fair enough; I was sick of the sound of it anyway. In fact, I still cannot bear to hear a very loud French film playing on TV--this is a trauma from which I may never recover. I had hidden my wallet and passport away in the one place I could be sure she would never look: inside a box of powdered soap in the cabinet under the kitchen tap, along with the other cleaning supplies. So really, I was quite lucky. If I had left the flat at all, the two of them would have stripped it completely. Russians may think all foreigners are weak-minded fools, but Finland has had 200 years experience dealing with them. They do make wonderful films, however.

Next time: Redrum!

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Don Juan in Helsinki: 21

Hey, this is Donho Likkanen, still drinking at the St. Urho Bar. Remember what I told you about Riita Koivistu? You know, the one who met Strawberry at the hotel, the typical Finnish 'daddy's girl'? Well, Maarit was a bit like that, except that her father was an alcoholic in Oulou, who she rarely ever saw. She was from a poor family, what you Americans would call 'from the wrong side of the tracks'. And while I would bet that Riita is Riita all the time. Maarit was different--she was only Maarit during the weekdays. Cool, calm, sensible, greedy, sober, responsible, hard-working, well-organized Maarit. Everything you would ever want in an office supervisor or accountant. On weekends and holidays, she was someone else altogether. Someone wild, unpredictable, almost a savage. Her hair was very dark, black and shiny as a raven; her teeth were white and sharp like the wolf. Perhaps she was part-Russian or even Sami, which is what we call the Lapp people in the north. Because on weekends, she was a witch. I had never met a girl like her before. For one thing, she was poor. For another, she was compulsively honest. Which turned out to not be such a good trait, really. But at that time, as you might imagine, I was hungry for someone who was the opposite of Stina.

I was on the deck, standing at the thick white iron railing trying to light a cigarette. In the roaring Baltic wind with its mist and spray, this was an impossible task; every time, as soon I struck a match it blew out, no matter how quickly I cupped my hand around it. Suddenly I heard a laugh beside me, and the click of a butane lighter; then a pair of pink hands holding a tiny flame were suddenly in front of me. I leaned forward and lit my cigarette from it. The owner of the hands was short, black-haired, very pale and smiling, with big icy-blue eyes and round, red cheeks, like a doll. This was Maarit. She lit her own cigarette and looked at me. I looked back. For a few moments we stared this way at each other (which I had never done before, only seen in films), while the deck pitched and rocked beneath us. In fact, it was just like a film. Her expression softened, she exhaled mentholated smoke and said, 'Want to bonk?'

To save money, I had been napping in the lounge, but she had booked a tiny sleeping cabin. For the next few hours we made hot squishy squid sex on the bottom bunk, all sweaty arms and salty squirting, adjusting our movement to the swell of the sea. In between, we drank viina, and she taught me how to play poker. I believe she enjoyed gambling more than she enjoyed bonking, even.

'I've never bonked a rich boy before,' she said while we were getting dressed in order to disembark.

'I'm not rich.'

'You talk like a Swede. You went to school with the Rosens and the Herlins and the Julins,' she said. I shrugged.

'They're just like everybody else,' I said with heavy irony. 'Under socialism, we all are.'

'Socialism is crap,' she said. 'Someday I'm going to be rich. Really, really rich. Know what I'll do then? I'll build a chain of luxury hotels with gambling casinos inside them. All over Europe. And I'll just spend my life going from one to another--there will always be a suite reserved just for me on the top floor.'

'Do you bonk lots of guys this way?' I asked her. 'You know, just meeting them casually like this?'

'Japp!' she said defiantly, her eyes daring me to say something more about it. We were walking up the stairwell now to the main deck, hauling our bags. Suddenly it seemed terribly important to me to say exactly the right words and in the right tone of voice. I tried to imagine what the Old Man of Odense would say in my shoes. Well, aside from drooling and howling.

'Do you think you might ever want to give that up for a bit? If you met the right guy, I mean?'

She looked at me crossly. 'I might,' she said at last, just as we reached the gangplank. And suddenly, just like that, I possessed a new ambition.

The problem with my ambition is that compared to hers, for example, or Stina's, or even Bjorni's, mine was not really very great, was it? Certainly my father would not have thought so, if I had offered it in place of becoming a doctor. I could just imagine that conversation: 'Donho, what do you plan to do with the rest of your life now that you've dropped out of university?'

'Oh, I plan to spend it being the right guy for Maarit, so she'll stop bonking strangers on ferries.'

But that thought leads me to another. I really had no idea of what being the right guy for Maarit, or for anyone else for that matter, might actually mean. How did one go about becoming such a person? What made my cold, distant, elderly father the 'right guy' for my mother? Certainly I hadn't been the right guy for Stina. Somehow I had managed to become so invisible to her that she had cried more tears over her agent in Copenhagen than she ever had for me. But was that what I really wanted, though--to make girls cry? One thing I already knew for sure about Maarit: however things turned out between us, she would never cry any tears for me or anyone else. She was tough. I admired that. Plus, she was amazing at bonking. Already, I didn't want anyone else. That is always the first, most dangerous trap to avoid when meeting a woman, I tell a group of Swedish dudes at the bar. Never, never limit your precious natural resource of bonking desire to just one woman, no matter how much you are tempted to do so. You are only squandering it. It is like petroleum. They agree with me enthusiastically. Then they ask me where they can actually meet some young Finnish women. I have no idea, really, so I will take them to 'Onella'. Hold on, I will BBIAF. In the meantime, think of happy thoughts, like bonking. I always do.

OK, here I am in Onella, which is a club to go to in order to dance and meet people. It is also a much noisier place than the last one. Of course, it is getting later in the day, and with the rain there is nowhere else to go for most people. I really should write bar reviews as I rove about like this. But why bother? I am sure there are many of them online already. Besides, all I am drinking is coffee right now. I suppose I could review the toilets.

That was what Maarit reminded me of. Coffee. She was sharp and dark and bittersweet, like espresso with a shot of Salmiakkikossu. Even her clothes smelled of this aroma instead of perfume (for obvious reasons, as I was later to discover. There are no coincidences). And of course menthol cigarettes. Speaking of which, it is time for a cigarette. What time is it? Late afternoon. Soon, I can call Maarit's office. Soon I can call New York. Oh wait, not until tomorrow at this time. So I have 24 hours more drinking and wandering about to do, like in 'Ulysses' by James Joyce. You are surprised I have read that book? Why? In addition to being the world's largest per capita drinkers of coffee (and therefore pissers), we Finns are also the largest per capita readers of books. Yes, it is true! It is our secret national vice. We may look stupid, sound stupid, and speak in a stupid, half-invented language, but we all read lots of books. What we choose to learn from them, of course, is anybody's guess. We aren't talking.

It may surprise you to learn this, but actually I think about bonking quite a lot. I don't just mean the sexy parts, though of course, I think about them, too; I mean that I contemplate the subject in a detached, scientific manner much as a Zen Master or a great philosopher might. Often when I am in the middle of it. Well, sometimes that is the best time for such meditation, since sex can become very boring rather quickly, actually, if you really think about it. Especially if you are doing it with someone who does not interest you. I will explain what I mean. A few years ago, I read a paper by the British academic, Will Self, called 'The Quantity Theory of Insanity'. In this he theorized, 'What if there is only a fixed proportion of sanity available in any given society in any given time?' This applies not only to society as a whole, but to smaller groups within it, such as the country of Finland or the Swedish dudes drinking with me now. The way this works is that when one person in a group, in a typical office workplace, for example, is clearly insane and causes terrible trouble for the other persons there, it unites the rest in comparative sanity. In other words, that lone nutcase person becomes a sort of totem or 'scapegoat' for all the crazy and bad behaviour in the office; it becomes mentally 'designated' to them. This causes everyone else to be nice and polite to each other. Laura the crazy temp was like that. Or Camilla in my office in New York right now. But once this person leaves or is fired, then suddenly everyone starts behaving badly toward each other again. There is no unity in the office any more. It is exactly the same principle as when you spend up to your income. Or with NATO after the end of the USSR. It is obvious that this Quantity Theory principle extends to economics, as well. Capitalism proves it; the richer one person in a group (let us say a group of friends from high school, for instance) becomes, then the poorer the rest are by comparison. By contrast, socialism is based on the principle that everyone is naturally half-poor and half-sane, and I think this is particularly true here in Finland.

So naturally then I began to wonder: is this principle also true for sex? Is there perhaps a 'Quantity Theory of Bonking'? In other words, is there only a limited quantity of sex available in any given society in any given time? In the old days, of course, young people did most of the bonking, so old people didn't bother to. But these days with Viagra all that has changed. Now seniors are bonking like crazed weasels, and the latest statistics show that young couples are too tired and busy to do it very often at all. In addition, there is always in every group of friends a sort of 'designated bonker', and this person, whether male or female, is assigned more and more of this role over time, as a quick tour of the online 'swinging community' websites will show you. Is it even possible that when one person in a small community is doing most of the heavy bonking, it makes everyone else more pleasant and polite? Like in an office? Or a primitive African tribe, where the chief has all the wives? Or even at an orgy in Westport, Connecticut? Of course, there is jealousy at first, but after a few years, doesn't that often turn into a sense of relief, even gratitude? After all, it is such hard work to just keep on bonking all those boring and sometimes surprisingly unattractive people. And one must really have a deep inner sense of optimism to keep working away at it, decade after decade. One must have 'sisu'. I think not so many people really have that these days, not where sex is concerned. Maybe even I don't any more. It is like those Hindus who are suffering from a new disease nowadays called 'curry fatigue'; they are eating spicy curries for many years, and then one day--BLAAT! Their digestive system just explodes. Perhaps that is what has happened to me with bonking.

But I do not tell the Swedish dudes this. I do not mention 'bonking fatigue', because no studly young dude wishes to hear about that. Let them find some nice young Finnish ladies to dance with. Why spoil their fun?

Only, they have not met any nice young Finnish girls. They have met two 'natashas'--Russian 'sex workers', who often come here illegally. These are a big problem to Finland nowadays, and there is talk of banning prostitution in the country, I have read. The number of sex clubs has risen in Helsinki from 1 to 13, and recently the Russian embassy was discovered to be running a brothel. I tell one of the Swedish dudes this, but unfortunately, as the result of this good deed, now I need to find another bar. The manager has overheard me and asked me to leave this club. Apparently there is an 'upper age limit of 27' here, and they don't want any old men hanging about. Quite right, too. Bonking fatigue is contagious.

BTW, another reader has emailed to me asking how I can connect to Wifi networks so easily wherever I go in Helsinki. Do they have public Wifi access for free? Well, to be totally honest, I don't know. I use a package of WEP networking password detectors called 'Aircrack' in order to connect to other people's protected networks. This scans nearby routers for password keys, which are notoriously poorly encrypted over WEP packets. For example, right now I am inside the Onella's office manager's computer on the club's private server, which is a Dell in his office. I am going through his financial records now. Oops. I accidentally deleted them. Oh well, I'm sure they are all well backed up. You are surprised I am a bit of a criminal? Don't be. Finland is perhaps the most law-abiding country in the world, with some of the world's highest luxury taxes on things like cars or computers. Or alcohol. Or cigarettes. Therefore every Finn is constantly buying and selling things on the black market and thus breaking the law. Historically, we are a nation of smugglers, anyway, especially during our 'Prohibition' years, which were roughly the same as yours in America. A true Finn is always a bit of a criminal. Maarit taught me this, as well. In fact, Maarit taught me everything I know about money.

And about life in jail. Oops, must run!

Well, he deserved that for kicking me out, didn't it? There is no justice in this life, you know--one must arrange for it oneself on an impromptu basis, when handed such an opportunity. OK, I am back. The rain is over. Now I am in a bar called the 'Angleterre', which is an English-style pub with a big Union jack flag outside the door. Have I been in here before? I cannot remember. It seems very familiar to me, however. All of these bars are beginning to look the same to me. They are like women. I think it is time to switch back to viina, I don't fancy the look of the 'fish'n'chips' here. Or maybe I will have a Guinness. Yes, it's true, I have been to jail. I haven't told you that. In fact, I have never told anyone. But it's not such a shameful thing these days to have spent a bit of time behind bars. It is common in professional sports in America. And in business. And only a few people are still alive who know my secret--Vaino, I suppose. Kylikki. Bjorn Wahlroos. And, of course, Maarit, who put me there.

It was a very strange feeling when I returned to Helsinki that midsummer. I had been away less than three days, yet my life was now changed in every way. For one thing, I was no longer in school. For another, I was madly crazy in love with Maarit. And for the third, I now had to serve my year of military service. We Finns do not quite view this the way the rest of the world does. In 1972 there was no war here and little likelihood of one. Our draft is fairly popular, even today, particularly with reservists, because it gives them a chance to get away from their wives and children for a week or two each year and go camping. The training part is most unpleasant, however, and so i was quite right to dread it, but dodging or evading it was simply out of the question. Even Vaino had submitted to his 'intti' the year before. Nowadays, of course, one can be discharged merely for being an 'Internet addict' (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/08/03/internet_addicts_finland/). I guess I would qualify for that now.

Uh oh. A 'natasha' has sat down next to me. She is not Russian but Latvian, she says when I ask. They are the 'poor country cousins' of the Swedes, just as the Estonians are ours. When she climbed into the barstool I saw needlemarks on her thighs, poor thing; she is no use to me, just as I am no use to her. But I will buy her viina until she finds a nice customer, I tell her, and she tells me to call her 'Yasmeena'. OK, Yasmeena, I will you the story of me and Maarit.

Next time: Leningrad Cowboy

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Don Juan in Helsinki: 20

The rain has nearly stopped outside, so now it's time for me to move on to a different bar. I will stop at Stockmann's on the way and buy an umbrella and a raincoat perhaps. So now I am saying goodbye to my friends here, Nad and Ville and all the others. You know, if they were Americans or Swedes I truly might suspect them of being gay blades! But, joking aside, that is rare in Finland, because gay sex is almost physically impossible for a true Finnish man--they must go to places like New York to do it. Although it is true those young fellows did seem a great deal more interested in Stina's partner than they were in her during the nude scene on TV. Of course, I know just how they felt, since I felt myself a similar horrible fascination that night in Odense watching 'Hamlet.'

This was not the only time I have ever had the strange experience of reading about myself in a journal and discovering that my memory of the relationship was very different from the lady's. I have had several reviews of myself posted on http://www.dontdatehimgirl.com, for example, that were very crazy and inaccurate. For example, I do not wear my sunglasses indoors very often--and never during sex. And then there was 'Laura'. This was a very strange chick who was writing a website, while working unsuccessfully as an 'office temp' during the daytimes, so from the very first date I could read her account online of everything that happened between us. Including her version of our conversations. So naturally, I asked her to remove my real name and any references to Finland or the street where I lived in New York. But she still seemed to think I was her boyfriend. I thought we were just bonking (actually, I thought we were NOT bonking, because she claimed to have deep problems with the idea of sex, so mostly we just slept together the first few dates.) But when I first read her website, I was forced to send her a legal agreement from my lawyer. So after that, she changed my name to 'Jason'. You can read the whole thing at: http://web.archive.org/web/20030323170602/http://www.laurasnyctales.com/. To be totally honest, I have almost no memory of her at all, except that she was always suggesting ways she would redecorate my loft if she moved into it. In New York, this is the worst possible warning signal to send a person, sort of like a romantic '911'.

OK, I have moved on to a new bar, the 'St. Urho'. This place is named after the satirical festival invented by Finnish refugees in Minnesota to mock the perpetual rule of Urho Kekkonen. The rain has driven many tourists and local drinkers off the Esplanadi and indoors, so now there is a crowd of them, smelling of warm wet dog, in here drinking and talking very loudly. The music is strictly 'The Streets' and 'Daft Punk', very last year. But all the women here are with men, so at least I am safe from them for now. I have taken great care to avoid Vaino, as well; I thought perhaps I spotted him in the distance on Bulevardi, after I left Stockmann's, standing in the rain and howling like a wolf, but I might easily have been mistaken. Actually, that reminds me of an odd incident that happened to me in Odense on the way to the theatre, that I had not thought of again until this moment. The theatre, BTW, turned out to be just south of the train station; Stina had cleverly detoured me around it in her written directions so that I would not try to meet her there. I suppose, instead of at the flat. Where, of course the journal, with all of its terrible information, was waiting for me.

You know, shock is an odd thing. When you are old, it robs you of all appetite, even for life, but when you are young, it can also make you very hungry. Odense, in addition to being the birthplace of Hans Christian Andersen--who ran away from home at about the same age as Stina and never came back again--is also the home of Odense Marcipan, so on my way to Jernbanegade, I stopped at Den Gamle Kro Bakerei and bought a few marzipan pastries. I was eating one outside on the street when I was hit by a bicycle from behind. The impact knocked me over into a puddle, and sent my pastries skidding along the pavement. The bicyclist, a pimply teenaged boy, quickly pedaled away, while I lay there too stunned to move. 'It seems we've drowned,' said a voice roughly in my ear. I was helped slowly to my feet. My right leg was very sore (I would limp slightly for days), and I had a bruised and swollen cheek where I had hit the cobbles, but nothing appeared to be broken.

My rescuer was an ancient homeless guy, squat and gnome-like, with wet shoulder-length grey hair that had been carelessly braided in places, and a long streaked grey and white beard. He had a black pirate patch over one eye, and when he smiled, it showed that every other tooth in his head was missing; most of those remaining glinted a dull silver. 'Could have been worse, son. In the old days that would have been a horse,' he said in thickly accented Swedish. His breath was a rotting mix of gums, stale Albani beer and akvavit. 'Or even a Leichter Panzerspahwagen. I can remember this street when it was hung over with swastikas. Your Count von Rosen was the first to use those, you know, not Hitler.' He belched, and began to brush the mud from my jacket, attempting to dry me off with the pages of a newspaper. I looked down--I now looked as wretched and bedraggled as he did.

'Thanks,' I said miserably. 'Can you tell me which way is the theatre?'

He gave me a shrewd glance. 'Love trouble?'

'How--how can you tell?' I said.

'There's always a girl in the picture. Remember that. Always a girl in the picture for you, son. Will you be staying on for Midsommer Aften?' (Midsummer Eve, later that month, what we Finns call 'St. John's Eve').

'I doubt it,' I said,

'Too bad,' he replied with every sign of deep regret. 'Denmark needs babies, many more babies. The theatre is just there, past the hotel, on its own little court.'

'Thank you, Herr..?' I said, fishing in my pocket for some change to give him. All I could find were several Danish kronor coins, which I handed to him.

'Me? I'm the Old Man of Odense!' Then he began to howl quite loudly, startling an elderly couple passing by. He popped the coins into his mouth one by one and swallowed them; then winked at me. 'You're a good boy. Give my regards to your mother and father.' When I glanced back in his direction from the next block, he was gone. And you want to know the strangest thing of all? All evening long, in spite of my heartbreak and despair at what I had just read in Stina's flat, a part of me deep down glowed from what he had said. 'You're a good boy.' No one had ever called me that before, certainly not my own father. Not that I could remember, anyway. Words have a magical power all of their own. I think I should like to be the sort of person who travels the earth always knowing the right words to say to make people feel that glow. But I am not. Instead, I must bonk them.

The plot of Hamlet is a very easy one to remember, even if you don't know it. It's about a kid, Hamlet, who is supposed to be king of Denmark, only his uncle Claudius has murdered his father, married his mother, and seized the throne. So he sulks and throws tantrums and occasionally kills people. He has a weepy girlfriend named Ophelia who drowns herself after he accidentally murders her father. Almost exactly like Vaino's life, really, now that I come to think of it, although his father didn't actually die for another year or two. But of course, Aino had. At the end of the play, in the final scene, everybody dies in a great bloodbath, basically. I must admit that I was rather looking forward to that part. My seat was on the balcony; after the lights went out, I went down and sat in an empty seat on the first row, so my view was not obstructed. Therefore I could see the faces of all the actors quite clearly.

The object of my most intense and horrified fascination was, of course, Hamlet himself. He was wearing a tunic and medieval tights, so it was impossible for me not to be constantly and most unpleasantly aware of his 'powerfully huge thighs' throughout the evening. After Hamlet has seen his father's ghost on the ramparts (who spills the beans about having been murdered), then Claudius makes his first appearance. Frankly, even in tights, he was not so 'old and frail' as I should have liked--but I suppose that is the trick of the actor's craft. Certainly, Stina looked ravishing and otherworldly in her stage debut; if she was nervous, she did not show it, other than by a certain over-loud emphasis of the wrong word at the wrong time. But in fairness, she was still very young. She did not do any worse than 'S' did in the role of Hamlet, really; both did pretty well I thought during the long, difficult scene when the 'play within a play', the 'Mousetrap', is performed. So I went wildly back and forth in my convictions. I was almost convinced at first that they had only a professional relationship from observing the 'chemistry' between them--but then in the famous 'country matters' scene I changed my mind again. Of course Ophelia was soon dead and out of the picture; but by then I couldn't help but notice the obvious hatred between Hamlet and Claudius. But was this, again, merely a professional jealousy? Or even just good acting? That seemed unlikely to me. And so it went for me for over two long hours, wavering back and forth between certainties, between elation and despair. Until at last, we came to the long final bloodbath.

In this scene, Laertes, the son of Polonius and brother of Ophelia, has arrived at the court of Elsinore to revenge himself on Hamlet for murdering his father and driving his sister to kill herself. So Claudius helpfully arranges a duel between them, at which Hamlet will drink poison and so lose and be killed. However, halfway through, Hamlet goes crazy and kills Claudius by stabbing him with his sword. When it was time for this in the tonight's production, however, Hamlet was over-enthusiastic and 'his wild thrusting' was far too 'painfully vigourous' for Claudius to bear. So instead of dying in a dignified fashion, after a brief soliliquy, Claudius hoisted himself to his feet and, screaming obscenities, tried to strangle the much younger Hamlet. For a few suspenseful moments the two men swayed and tottered about, then tripped over the footlights and fell heavily together into the orchestra pit, for all purposes ending the performance. Though some attempt was made by Fortinbras to shout out his 'goodnight, sweet prince' speech before the curtain was pulled.

Stunned, I exited with the rest of the audience; I was to wait for her, according to Stina's intructions, at the cafe across the street. It seemed fairly certain to me that the two actors had some good motivation to dislike each other--and increasingly, the evidence was mounting that the reason for this was inside the pages of Stina's journal. But still, I felt I must actually meet Stina face to face again before I could be sure. It was irrational, of course, but I am sure everyone has felt this way at some time in their lifes. I sat at a little table facing the window; by the time she finally trailed out of the theatre doors and crossed the street, it was nearly midnight, and so was dark at last, since we were so far south. But it was a Saturday, so the streets of the little storybook city were quite brightly lit; I thought i could detect a weary reluctance in her steps as she walked in the cafe door. Perhaps she was just tired.

'Oh, I'm so exhausted!' she said when she caught sight of me. 'What a terrible ordeal! Did you see it, Lemo?' We hugged; she kissed me listlessly. 'Professional actors are so jealous--they are like big babies. Did you see how the two of them conspired to wreck my debut? I'll never forgive either of them as long as I live!' We ordered coffee and cakes, while she continued to chatter. She went over every nuance of her performance--she quizzed me for my opinion of each of her lines, but without waiting for any answer. Did she seem properly polished to me? Or over-rehearsed? She begged me to be honest with her: should she just give it all up? Was she totally without talent? It crossed my mind to say yes, but her performance at that moment would have made a liar of me. She was displaying a great deal of talent at hiding her emotions, whatever they might really be, where I was concerned.

As she talked, I saw a figure furtively steal out of the theatre doors behind her and tiptoe across the street during a long lull in the now very sparse traffic. It was Hamlet, still wearing his tunic and tights and little gaily-coloured feathered cap, with his stage sword thrust at an awkward angle into his belt. By the time Stina announced that she was too tired to eat and just wanted to go home to enjoy a long, hot bath, I had forgotten about him. But as the two of us walked together down Jernbanegade back toward her flat, I looked back and saw his shadow flitting behind us, hopping and dashing from one bit of cover--a lamp-post, a shop doorway--to another. Several times groups of tourists noticed him also and pointed him out to each other; perhaps they thought he was part of the town's miniature 'Hans Christian Andersen' theme park staff. In spite of his sword, I felt no fear of him; quite the reverse, in fact. If he confronted us, I felt I would enjoy giving him a good beating. The reason for my sense of confidence was very simple, if maybe unrealistic; we Finns traditionally believe all Swedish men to be 'homos'. In fact that is a favourite crowd chant during hockey matches between the two countries. By the time we approached Stina's front door, I was even feeling quite eager for him to rush out from the darkness and cause a scene. But he did not. For all I know, he spent the rest of the night outside, staring up at her windows. Swedes are always scared of a true Finn.

But still his haunting of us had an effect on me intellectually. It forced me to face the fact that at least most of what Stina had written in her journal had been true. He was behaving exactly like a jealous lover. In fact, I even found myself approving of his courage to make such a fool of himself--he was behaving as a jealous lover should act. Of course, I reminded myself, he was an actor. Now a part of me wanted to simply pick up my suitcase and walk out; perhaps I could find an open bar and deal with this crisis properly in traditional Finnish fashion. Perhaps I could even find Mr 'Powerfully Huge' and beat the devil out of him. But I stayed where I was out of simple curiosity. Wounded though I was, still I felt an idle, almost malicious interest just to see what Stina would do next. In that sense, her performance now was far more entertaining than it had been onstage.

When we got inside, and she turned on all the lights in the flat, I could see for the first time what a shambles she really lived in. Clothes were spread everywhere, even thrown in heaps on the floor; we had to clear them off the bed in order to lie down. 'Oh, you go ahead and fall asleep if you like, Lemo darling,' she told me. 'I know you must be tired from your long day, just as I am from mine. I'm going to run a hot bath and relax in it before I come to bed. I need to wash all this terrible disappointment away.' I said nothing. I took off my soiled, stained clothes and put on clean ones from my bag, then lay down on her duvet, which was little cleaner. A cool breeze rustled through the lace curtains. Somewhere out in the night below, Hamlet lurked, lovesick. An hour passed. I went into the bathroom; Stina was sleeping soundly in the bath, the water nearly ice-cold. I was considering whether just to leave her there or not when the telephone rang loudly in the bedroom.

It was her agent, Holger, in Copenhagen. He had heard that she was dumping him for another agent in Stockholm. He rang her twice more that night; each time she would lie next to me in the bed crying into the receiver at him. 'Oh, I know, I know, I'm being so unfair to you,' she would sob. 'This is cruel and terrible of me. And after you've invested so much of yourself in my career. It's just that I've outgrown you already. It has nothing to do with you as a person--you're a warm, caring, kind, decent man. Oh no, you mustn't say that about yourself.' I could hear him weeping as well on the other end. And he wasn't even gay! He was married with two children! On and on this went for hours. And in those days long-distance telephone calls were quite expensive. Near to dawn, about three hours later, she fell sound asleep again (this time snoring very loudly), and I took the opportunity to slip out of the bedroom with my clothes and my bag. I dressed quietly, repacked my suitcase, and crept quietly out the front door. On the front landing, I thought of leaving her a farewell a note, but decided against it. There seemed nothing to say, really. Then, as I walked down the silent, deserted street, it occurred to me that I had not actually said a single word to her the whole time we had been together. Not one word! And being both Finnish and a woman, she hadn't even noticed.

I caught the first train that morning back to Copenhagen. I spent an extra day or so there, and saw the sights and went to the Tivoli. Then I caught the ferry home. And it was on that ship that I first met Maarit Näkyvä. The Old Man of Odense had been right--there is always a girl in the picture.

Next time: The True Finnish Girl.

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Don Juan in Helsinki: 19

Hey, this is Donho Likkanen back with you again. Or 'moi', as we say in Finland. Now I am blogging from a very nice bar called 'Hideaway' inside a club called 'Lost & Found' on Annankatu where there are no women at all, not a single one. Phew! What a relief. I just hope the Strawberry doesn't see the name and decide to come inside to look for me. I have met a few friendly young men in here who have listened to some of my bonking tips for driving women mad with ecstasy with very great interest. I am always happy when I can mentor the young in this helpful manner. And make them happy and amused. Those who cannot do, preach, as the saying goes in English. As you can probably tell, I am beginning to relax now and get just the tiniest bit drunk from my diet of viina and black coffee.

One of them named Ville tells me he has never had a girlfriend. He is a typical local type. 'You Finns!' I tell him, jokingly. 'However do you make babies? You need to bonk more.' For some reason this makes his friends giggle. They all have tickets for Cricket's concert tonight and are very excited.

I have been thinking about sexual fidelity since I have arrived here. Why on earth was I faithful to Stina for all those months??? It is true, I was. I passed up many opportunities to bonk with beautiful young girls--and on more than one occasion, their mothers. Never, never be faithful, I am telling these young dudes at the bar now. It is a total waste of time. I suppose I fell into this trap from a naive, optimistic yearning after something better than just making hot monkey sex. Perhaps it was a fear of abandonment, as a shrink has suggested. Or perhaps I wanted to experience the feeling of being in love, whatever that may be, LOL. Whatever, this crazy delusion did not go away after Stina, oh no. I was actually faithful to Maarit and even Kylikki, as well. But that was not so much out of principle as exhaustion. That's right, my true bonking career did not even begin until after Likki left me. For the second time. I haven't told you the whole truth about that yet, actually--after Likki ran off with Vaino and made a baby with him, I took her back. Along with the kid. Of course that only lasted a few months. But that story lies in the future, at the moment it is Stina we are remembering. By an amazing coincidence, a film she was in called 'Amorosa' is playing on the bar TV right now to provide me with an aide-memoir (http://stan1.nudesonline.com/track/MTczMjg5OjI4OjMz/). I am familiar with this film already, having bought the DVD when I discovered she had a nude sex scene in it. Well, naturally I had a zoological interest in how she had aged. And really she has kept in most excellent shape (BTW, if you follow the link you will also get to see her 'bravely fighting back tears' as a special added bonus. Since posting my revealing hot squishy glandslapping sexual encounters with such celebrities as Christie Brinkley and the 'artist formerly known as the Cricket', I have been contacted by the agents for a number of other famous ladies who wish me to write 'exposes' of them in this blournal. I am very sorry, but at the present time I cannot fit even Christine Lahti, the famous Finnish descended film actress, or the effervescent pop chanteuse Paula Abdul into my memories. However, I shall certainly keep them in mind should vacancies arise.) Ah here it comes, her scene. I doubt if I told all the studly young dudes in this bar that she had once been my girlfriend, they would even believe me! But young people are different nowadays. They have no faith in others.

After her visit with me at Joulu, things became a bit cold between us. We had planned for me to visit her at Easter, but she wrote to tell me that it wouldn't be possible yet. She was living in some sort of pension or dormitory connected with the theatre school, and boyfriends weren't allowed to stay. But if we waited until summer, her parents had agreed she could rent a flat of her own. After that her letters and phone calls became more infrequent. By then I had given my medical studies, and mostly sat in my room listening to Jimi Hendrix and Cream and drinking viina. Naturally, my father was deeply disappointed in me. My only real activity was still to arrange lighting and 'light shows' for rock bands, though the craze for the latter was just about dead by now. It wasn't the '60s any more. But by summer, I had saved up enough money for a trip to Odense. These days, of course, there is likely a commuter flight every day from Vaantaa to Odense, so I could maybe have been there in an hour, but in 1972 I had to first take a big Baltic ferry to Copenhagen and then a train which was carried to the island of Fyn, where Odense is, by another ferry. It is lucky for me I have always been a good sailor. Especially because it was still June and so rained every day.

Speaking of which, it has now begun to rain heavily outside. The fine weather has finally ended, just in time for the Cricket's concert. Poor Strawberry!

It was Stina's idea for me to come to Odense. All that spring, things had become very distant between us, and she never seemed to have time to write or phone. I had grown so sick of this 'up in the air' feeling, I had even asked her, during one of our infrequent calls, if she wanted to break up with me. 'Oh, no, Lemo!' she had said. 'I would never do that. To dump someone by letter or over the telephone is inhumanly cruel. Besides, I have always believed that if two people ever decide they no longer love each other, they should still meet face to face to say goodbye. So often when that happens, they realize they're making a terrible mistake and change their minds before it becomes final. But of course, that has nothing to do with us. Just because two people have been busy with other things in their lives doesn't mean they aren't deeply and passionately in love still.' So I bought my tickets. The journey took a whole day. This was the first time in my life I had ever been to any other country than Finland or Sweden. Copenhagen seemed very huge to me, but I thought Odense was a bit like such Finnish 'wooden towns' as Savonlinna or Turku. I won't bore you by writing much about the city; if you are interested, you can Google it. Better yet, just go there. It is the the third-largest city in Denmark, and lies on the 'garden island' of Fyn at the tip of a fjord. It has one of the best-preserved medieval 'old towns' in Europe, and even in 1972, when most of Denmark was still a bit poor and shabby, it was a lovely place to visit, even in a steady drizzle. I wish I'd seen more of it.

When I arrived at the train station, there was no Stina there to meet me. She had warned me that this might be the case, because she might be stuck in rehearsals all day, and so had written me directions to her flat and even mailed me a spare key. I believe it was this key that had filled me with the optimism to make the journey at all. I had turned it over in my palm a hundred times, trying to imagine her life there, how her flat might look, how it would feel to be together again. Surely she wouldn't mail me the key to her front door unless her feelings for me were still strong. Would she? Her flat was on Vestergade over a beauty salon just across the street from the Hansen Vinhandel, which is a large wine shop. School was out, but Stina had landed a part in the Odense Theatre's prestigious summer stock program as understudy to Ophelia in a Danish-language production of Hamlet. An 'enfant terrible' named Bille August had come down from Copenhagen to direct it, and the cast featured a few well-known actors and actress, including the most popular TV actor in Denmark, Paul Hagen, as well as the young Swedish actor Stellan Skarsgård, who had made a big hit all over Scandinavia in his TV series 'Bombi Bitt och Jag', in the role of Hamlet. I knew all this, of course, from Stina's letters on the subject--just as I knew, deep down, that she would not be just an understudy for very long. I imagined her practicing her 'drowned face.' Then I thought of Aino and felt a bit sick.

They say that any Swede can make himself understood in Denmark. Perhaps that is so, but I couldn't understand a word they said in reply, and in those days I thought and spoke in Swedish as fluently as in Finnish. After a while I gave up asking where I might find a taxi or a tram, and just picked up my suitcase and umbrella and started walking east. As it turned out, there were no trams in Odense, merely dark red buses and hundreds and hundreds of bicycles everywhere, many of them whizzing about quite dangerously. Now, you should know this about me: I hate bicycles! I consider them both dangerous and unhealthful. They are a great enemy to good bonking, because prolonged exposure to a bicycle seat causes impotence and damage to the male testicle. If you don't believe me, that is why Lance Armstrong got cancer there. So Likkanen will not go near one of those vicious things, not even in a gym. I turned south and walked down Thomas B. Trigge Gade (I think that was its name; I am too buzzed to check it) through a very pleasant shopping district with wide slippery, cobble-stoned streets and ancient timbered white houses leaning all wobbly toward each other at crazy angles. A few even had thatched roofs! And I could see green everywhere, with many rows of old trees and hedges around the buildings. It seemed very lush compared to Helsinki, even in the grey drizzle. I could see why Stina was happy there. Perhaps she would ask me to stay. All the way down the street when I was not dodging cyclists, I was daydreaming about what my life might be like if I lived there. Then I took a wrong turn on Vestergade, but finally I went back in the right direction and found her flat up a flight of stairs from the street. Her key fit in the lock; I turned it, and went inside.

Stina had many talents, but she was no housekeeper. The place was a terrible mess. It was dingy enough anyway; the floorboards were so old and chipped and worn away that one could glimpse down into the hair salon beneath through the cracks between them. But Stina had done nothing to pretty it up or even clean it--in fact. from the state of the flat and the stacks of dishes in the galley kitchenette, it was difficult to tell whether she had even been home at all recently. However, there was a note cello-taped to the mirror above the hall table addressed to me. 'I'm still rehearsing, dearest Lemo, and won't have time to meet you at the flat, because you'll never guess what--Birgitta, who was the lead Ophelia is in the hospital with a terrible case of food poisoning, so I will be taking her place in the play tonight!!! Isn't it exciting? And you will be there for my world premiere onstage in Shakespeare! Come to the theatre at 8 or so, but don't come backstage--it isn't allowed. So I'll meet you at the coffeehouse across the street after the performance is over. But promise me you'll be there to see me! And hoping I 'break a leg'!! Oh, Lemo, isn't this exciting? It's just what we've always dreamed of.' So I would have two more hours to kill, I thought, glancing around in the gloom, illuminated only by the grey daylight through the curtains and glowing strips of pale light leaking through the floor from below. Perhaps I would get something to eat at a local restaurant or bakery in the meantime; certainly there was nothing left here to eat. Then I noticed her journal on the table directly beneath where she had left the note, carelessly left flung open with a pen on top of it.

Now Stina had always kept a journal, and often during our months together she would read to me from it; bits of poems, thoughts about her future, gossip from school, reasons why she hated Finland, even short stories set in the mystic forests of the Norse twilight. 'Someday I'm going to be very famous,' she would often tell me. 'Then we'll both be glad I kept a record of all my thoughts and dreams.' Still, I did not feel I had the right to read from it without permission. I had never done so before. Yet...in this case, it seemed an easy and very tempting way to discover exactly what her feelings for me really were and whether or not I had in fact wasted my time and money by coming here at all. In addition, by leaving it wide open in the hallway beneath her note, it seemed fairly evident that Stina, who left little to chance, was choosing this means of communicating with me. But what was she trying to tell me? I stood there, wavering back and forth, unable to decide what to do and filled with a vague sense of trepidation at what i might find inside those pages. I remember once, many years ago, reading of a famous Japanese poet (I cannot remember his name) who had committed suicide in the 1920s. In the note he left behind, he said his reason for killing himself was from 'a vague sense of trepidation.' So this was my emotion also at that moment. Finally I picked up the notebook and read it. Naturally, I turned on a light first.

The early parts of it--written in the spring--still bore some resemblance to the girl I knew. Several I times I was even mentioned in the first few pages, such as in: 'Note to L: Shave no more often than every other day, but whatever you do, don't ever grow a beard, as so many of the ugly Danes here do.' The 'beard', it turned out, belong to Paul Hagen, the veteran character actor who had recently become a household name all over Scandinavia for his role as the pet shop clerk Clausen, in the Danish TV soap opera "Huset på Christianshavn'. There was no mention of his taste in shirts or shoes.

In Stina's words, 'this gentle, sensitive, yet much older man' was deeply troubled by a bad marriage with his wife at home. They had met after some sort of theatre program speech he had given at her school; he had then 'taken her under his wing', and recommended an agent in Copenhagen. In fact this agent, Holger was his name, was responsible for her to be in summer stock right now. She had also, at his suggestion, joined the Danish Actors' Union. There were perhaps a dozen pages where she agonized deeply over Hagen's growing affections for her, because she found him physically 'repugnant, even repulsive'; however, when at last after a week or two their relationship was finally consummated, 'this very aged and frail, yet still aggressively masculine, figure made love to me tenderly and sobbing with gratitude, exactly as would a baby or small child' and afterwards 'wept nakedly and unashamedly in my arms'. (BTW, I just looked him up; the very aged and frail fellow was 52 at that time, exactly two years younger than I am now. Stina's present age, in fact).

Feeling very nauseated, I skimmed through the next chapters a bit, noting the absence of any more references to 'L', and arrived at June and with it, the arrival of Bille August. 'What a relief it is at last to be around a man of nearly my own age, and not only that, one who is frighteningly, almost terrifyingly cerebral. I feel that around him I am almost naked, he seems to see right through me, leaving my every emotion open and stripped bare to his gaze. He agrees with me that Holger is not really doing his job properly and has some very sardonic and witty things to say about P. Whatever am I going to do on this score?' Then later. 'B. has extensive experience and has suggested more professional representation in Stockholm. He is coming over tonight, and I will cook him supper. I have told him of my Cordon Bleu classes in Paris. He says there is even a chance I might land a part in a TV series next year! Imagine that! P. will object, of course, but his possessiveness is becoming creatively stifling. I will have to put my foot down with him soon. Yet each time we are together, his childlike need overwhelms me once again.' Then there followed a list of healthful suggestions for Hagen to improve his appearance, including exercise, weight loss, and dental and cosmetic surgery. The beard, it seems, had been shaved off some time before.

Now her writings appeared to contain more 'B's than 'P's. Such as: 'B's need for me terrifies me, as does his jealousy. I am becoming convinced that any moment he will become completely deranged and attack P. Last night, he made violent love to me more than 5 times, by my count, though his passion overwhelmed him quickly each time after just a minute or two. Still, I am most satisfactorily sore this morning, thanks to his masterful and artistic performance. I even offered to bring the "maestro" breakfast in bed this morning, but he insisted that he had to dash out. I think he is afraid we will be discovered by P. Of course, I have pointed out that as a still-married man, P. is hardly in any position to cause a scene. Still, I am beginning to see that B. is often unrealistic and inclined to endlessly over-intellectualize. It is all very well to have a "meeting of the minds" with a sexily charismatic partner, but sometimes one wishes for the all-consuming embrace of a raw, animal lover, who doesn't cry or beg for permission or make excuses but simply savagely attacks, literally ripping my clothes off before raping me most deliciously.'

Enter 'S'. 'At the beginning of rehearsals, I had thought Stellan to be arrogant and foolish. After all, what is his theatrical background? None at all, really, merely the role of a juvenile delinquent in a popular TV series. Hardly any sort of qualification to play the part of "Hamlet", one would think. And yet, I have found him to actually be both sensitive and genuinely charismatic. And Swedish men are always so irresistable to me! Last night we escaped from the 'grownups' and went off on our own after drinks. What a relief to finally be around a man of my own age, to laugh and joke together like happy children. If I am honest with myself, B. is awfully old and serious for his age. And P. has already become a grandfatherly figure to me in my affections--often I will simply allow him to doze off and have a nap. But S. is so different from either of them. How powerfully huge he is! His thighs are like a bull's! His wild thrusting was so painfully and thrillingly vigorous, I was actually afraid I had injured myself! And yet this morning, I find myself only wanting more. He has suggested his own agent in Stockholm would be perfect for me!'

Now I need hardly tell you that as I slowly read all this (and much more besides, which I have mercifully forgotten after all these years), I became filled inside with a growing sense of horror. In fact, I felt very numb and cold, as if I could not move. Yet, with this feeling came also a strange sense of mental detachment. For one thing, it is important to remember that Stina was very dramatic and always inventing her own fantasy world. It was quite possible, perhaps even 50% possible, that none of this had actually happened at all, except in the pages of her journal. If I confronted her with it, aside from being able to accuse me of violating her privacy, she might simply laugh it off as 'ideas' for a script or short story. Or, worst of all, she might admit to all of it or some part of it merely to get rid of me. I was actually in a terrible quandary. If I started a fight with her over this, I would either force her to dump me--or else I would have to 'officially believe' her explanation and accept things the way they were forever after. But if I said and did nothing, I was accepting her right to do whatever she wanted to do in future, to sleep with any lovers she liked, and therefore submit me to endless humiliation, without a word being said aloud (which is quite typical of many Scandinavian marriages, actually). So you see, I had just been thoroughly checkmated. And that is why I decided, in my shocked, numb state of mind, to do nothing, to postpone all judgement in the matter for the evening. I would simply go to the theatre and watch her performance, then meet her in the cafe after. I had never set eyes on any of these guys, this 'P' and "B' and 'S'; I had no idea what any of them even looked like. Perhaps none of them actually existed at all. But if I met them and saw them with her, I thought, then I would know for certain. It seemed the wisest and most natural course to take. And besides, it was a bit late to find a hotel room.

And so, armed with this dreadful foreknowledge, I went to the play.

Next time: Alas, poor Likkanen...

Read more!

Don Juan in Helsinki: 18

Now I am feeling very badly to desert Lou like this, but the gentlemen's code is like Cinderella's carriage. It expires at midnight. And it is now three minutes past. One cannot expect more loyalty than this from any wingman, not when he is lumbered with someone like Priscilla, who perhaps should have hired an ambulance with an oxygen respirator for the evening. I am sorry, but Lou is on his own now. He has had his opportunity to seduce his stick-insect fashion model, and all he has done is amuse her instead. He cannot expect me to pass up this opportunity to bonk a woman who has just appeared in a swimsuit on the cover of 'Sports Illustrated.' He is a man; he will understand. Twiglet and I use the back 'celebrity exit' into an alley off 53rd just in case. She doesn't want to be seen with me any more than I want to be seen with Priscilla Pig. But soon Likkanen will change her mind on that score, have no fear! She is in for a night of ecstasy beyond her wildest dreams.

Unfortunately, it doesn't quite turn out that way.

I think maybe you know me well by now. You know I am far too discreet to give away any lady's secrets, no matter how famous she is. But still I am sensitive to the many moods and chemical tides that wash through a woman's veins like the deep, dark mysterious sea. This is the essence of being a great lover. And so sometimes even I am forced to notice when a lady who is in my arms is having perhaps just a tiny little bit of momentary trouble achieving the delicious ultimate climax of a powerful and deeply fulfilling orgasm, the sort she has a perfect right to expect from a Likkanen. There are many kinds of possible distractions. Often her mind is just on other things; perhaps the telephone has rung several times during our bonking. Or perhaps her small infant is howling in the next room. Perhaps 'Auntie Flo' (or 'puolukkapäivät', as we say in Finnish: 'lingonberry days') is just about to make her monthly visit. Or perhaps the lady is mentally balancing her chequebook. One can never be sure with women, LOL! Their mystery is why we love them. But for an experienced lover there are subtle signals that tell him when this lovely natural process of sexual release is being frustrated; tooth-grinding, for instance, nervous tics (like belching), or occasionally even loud disappointed groans and curses. With Twiglet, this whole dreadful business began with a single innocent little giggle.

Now, for me at least, bonking is not a laughing matter. Not in the middle of it, anyway. And scientific studies have proved this is so for all men. This is why there is no comedy in pr0n fims. They even tried to make some in the 1980s, but they were a total flop. Even the actors complained. Of course, it is different for the times in between bonks. Laughter is very natural then, especially if you are actually conversing with each other. Though most people used to watch TV instead in 1981. One former lover even enjoyed playing cards in between. Nowadays, of course, the women just talk on their cell phones, and the men play video games. No, no, sex is not a funny business. Female laughter is the deadly enemy of the healthful male erection. So, naturally, I stopped what I was doing at once. I had to.

'Am I tickling you?' I asked.

'Oh no,' she said.

'Are you nervous?' Once I bonked two Chinese girls who giggled for hours, but of course, they stopped as soon as I actually was making monkeys with them. Later I discovered that Chinese people often laugh when they are frightened or uncomfortable; it is a cultural thing. But Twiglet wasn't Chinese.

'No, I just think it's sort of funny. I mean look at you--you're all upset and red in the face.'

'You think bonking is just funny? How long have you felt this way?'

'Well...always, really,' she said, in a vague sort of voice. 'I guess.' They say that Frenchmen are the world's greatest lovers, but I must say I doubt that very much. Her husband was French, and she told me later he hadn't even noticed this laughing habit of hers. Or that she had never had an orgasm. However, I certainly did! But the harder I tried, the louder it got and the longer it went on. And please believe me when I say I tried everything. And I tried it for many many hours. I even invented three new zoo animals just for her, including the 'goldfish', the 'anteater', and the 'vampire bat'. But it was no use. After a week of this, my neck froze up, and I had to wear a brace, like someone who has been in a traffic accident. But of course, this did not affect my ability to bonk. So I swallowed my manhood and continued trying to conquer her strange inhibition. It was a challenge, you see. Also it was not just about sex any more. I even tried to employ romance, as well! I lit dozens of scented candles, spilled rose petals everywhere, bought champagne dinners...and of course, lots of cocaine, since Viagra had not yet been invented. I was bankrupting myself. And all to try to stop her from laughing.

Now for pure bonking, as opposed to oral sex, the animal kingdom makes for a very bad guide. Birds, for instance, are finished in several seconds. Lions are so lazy they often fall asleep in the middle, and the bonking habits of apes and monkeys are frankly disgusting, even to me. And I will not even mention insects. This is one of the many reasons why the 'Kama Sutra' is so useless a book to learn sex from. I will admit that some of the principles are sound: size and shape actually really do matter, and a 'bear woman', for example, will find very little lasting joy with a 'deer man' (luckily, Likkanen is a 'bull man', LOL!) But the positions are generally foolish and uncomfortable and the romantic advice is for the mentally handicapped, IMHO. Of greater use to me has been the study of the techniques of the Sufi masters and those of Tantric Yoga. The manipulation of the prana and the kundalini, or vital sexual energies that rise up from the base of the spine, is of particular interest, as well as the meditative techniques that can help one think of other things during the inevitable boring or unpleasant moments. The best teacher, of course, is constant practice, but if you cannot arrange for that, you may find the disciplines of the Zinja monks of ancient Japan most useful of all to the skilled and sensitive lover. They teach arrhythmic variations to regular everyday bonking based on the harmonies of nature. I have personally adapted these to more modern rhythms which I have named, for example, 'The Dropped Ping-Pong Ball' (each thrust taking place in half the time of the one before, particularly effective when alternated with its precise opposite, 'Flubber'), the 'Mambo', and the 'Tail-Gunner'--along with its delightful but exhausting variation, the 'Spinning Tail-Gunner.' But even this last one caused nothing but more shrieks of mocking laughter! It haunts me still, this mad sound, like the screams of banshees or evil water-witches. Since then, I have always been a bit afraid I will hear it again from other women. For me the true moment of ecstasy only arrives when I know there will no screams of laughter but sweet moaning noises or even just polite silence.

But with Twiglet, this was never to be. Finally one night, I grew so overheated in my bonking that I opened up a window in her bedroom. It was winter, and we forgot all about it when we fell asleep. The next morning I woke up with my back seized up completely. I could not move! Not even the littlest bit; not even to go to the bathroom. I could not get out of her bed for nearly three days, and I had to piss in a bucket. To ease the pain I took some Motrin that she had for her 'heavy periods'. This made me very stoned, but did not loosen my muscles. Worst of all, Twiglet now had the opportunity she had been waiting for--to start talking to a captive audience. And after she started, of course, she would not shut up. Looking back on it, I suppose that in many ways, her laughter during sex was really much better than her conversation after it. She had two main topics. The first was all the people in the industry who had slighted her or who had been cruel to her when she was first starting out in it. Someday, she said, she would write a book and expose all of them by their real names. This seemed a very infantile and even pitiful ambition to me. And so much work! 'Move on, lady!' I thought to myself, LOL. The second subject that preoccupied her was her lifelong battle with constipation. For two days I heard about nothing but various sorts of 'roughage', while she sat or exercised in front of the professional make-up mirrors that took up most of the adjoining room. On the third day, when she was off on a shoot, I phoned Lou and he and his friend Brad Balfour came over and carried me downstairs to a taxi-cab. I suppose Paris must have looked very much the same when his dead body was carried back on his shield to Troy.

In fact, I wonder if Helen of Troy wasn't a bit of a giggler as well. It might explain many things.

It is Sunday. When I was young the cathedral bells would be tolling, as well as in churches all over the city. But now nothing. Only the radio can be heard booming up from below. And all the talk I hear from it is of Cricket's concert tonight. I suppose this is the new religion these days. I hope the Strawberry has a happy time when she goes to it. I like to think of her jumping up and down and singing along with the music. I realize I was very cruel to her, but truly, that was a good thing. She is much better off without me. Still, I am sure she is not a giggler. Not even when she is drunk. And there is something else I liked about her a lot; unlike Twiglet, she didn't snore.

What shall I do with my long free Sunday, this 21-hour day filled with bright sunlight? I cannot think. The floor is covered with plastic Stockmann bags, Antiilla bags, Academy Bookshop and Free Record Shop bags. But suddenly I do not want any of the things inside them any more. I cannot telephone Maarit at her business number until tomorrow or even Tuesday, August 1st, if she is still on vacation. I cannot telephone Magnus or Jesper in New York until tomorrow evening. There is no one in Hawaii I wish to call at all; the only person who knows me there is the manager of my condo building. I am bored. I had not realized until now just how much of my life was devoted to bonking. And not just bonking, of course, but all the rituals and preparations and prayers that accompany the activity. Perhaps those are what I am really missing about this Sunday. Of course, at least now I am spared all the messy cleaning up after.

This is becoming morbid. Inside every true Finn there is always this tendency too much to brood. It is not healthful for me to just sit here inside this boring hotel room on such a pleasant sunny day and blog. No no, I must find something constructive to do with my time. So, after much thought and some watching of TV, I decide to take a tour of every bar in Helsinki and get very, very drunk. And while I get drunk I will have many deep, profound philosophical reflections about life. And bonking.

It is a strange thing, isn't it? Asking a woman to bonk is very easy for me. Asking a woman to be my girlfriend is not. In fact I have only done it twice in my life, first with Stina (who said yes) and then with Maarit (who said no). Likki doesn't count of course, because I never asked her anything, she simply demanded what she wanted. In fact, that was how I learned we were to be married, by overhearing her conversations with other people on the telephone. With the Strawberry, I have never had any urge to ask her to bonk with me. No, no, none at all. Well, that is for most obvious reasons, since I am dying of cancer and therefore have no interest in sex. But I can imagine asking her to be my girlfriend. Perhaps it is her hair. But, of course, it would be a disaster if she said yes (it always is). When I asked Stina, I had no idea of this. It was like those old cartoon filmstrips of a 'Lovers' Leap'. When two people fall in love they take a giant leap of faith together off the edge of a cartoon cliff. Because everything that lies ahead for them is unknown; in fact, they are really two strangers to each other. It is very sad, however, that only one of them ever survives this great leap. Perhaps the one who falls the harder cushions the impact for the other one. Such matters are all very strange to me. You know, matters like 'love'.

I think love was very strange for Stina, too, but she came prepared for it with many maps and manuals. You can bet she would have had plenty of plans and things for me to do today; oh yes, she had a very definite idea of all the many duties and responsibilities of a boyfriend. And she was very adaptable--she was always adding new ones. I had no idea of all this, of course, when I asked her to be my girlfriend that night in the Torni. I had only a very vague sort of dreamy picture in my head of what it would be like to have a girlfriend at all, lots of nice bonking and parties with friends, for example. Her vision of romance came as quite a surprise to me. But I went along with it, partly because it was all so new, and partly because I was simply amazed at her energy and inventiveness at finding new things for me to do. Also, it was nice at first to have someone to fuss over me, arrange my schedule, and order me about. Medical school studies are very hard work and take many hours; one has no time for a real social life. It was a nice feeling to have her curled up in the corner with a book sometimes while I revised or to have her interrupting me with snacks or meals. She even committed the ultimate sacrifice for an actress--she would sometimes cook for me! And a few of her dishes were actually almost edible. Every time we had some sort of screaming fight (and this often happened because of her terrible temper), she would buy a new shirt or phonograph album for me as a present. I knew by then that this was simply a tactic from one of her books, of course, but it still felt pleasant. After all, when someone still makes the effort to deceive you, you know they truly love you. Also it turned out that Stina and I had many things in common. For one thing, we both hated Finland, but unlike me, Stina already had a plan of escape. As soon as I became her boyfriend, she started to include me in her plotting. And of course, this was very flattering.

'First we'll move to Stockholm,' she would say. 'Then after you have studied at the Karolinska and I've studied at the Teaterhögskola, we'll move to Paris. We'll be the most famous and glamourous couple there. You'll become a famous doctor at the Institut Pasteur, and I'll become a famous actress at the Comedie Francaise and make films with Truffaut and Godard. Everyone will desire us, but no one can have us because we'll be totally, blissfully faithful to each other. That's why you need to learn proper French, Lemo.' This is how she talked, often for hours. This was how she wove her magic spells, by repeating her fantasies over and over until everyone around her became maddened and exhausted by them and made them come true. Stina was lovely, but there are actresses far lovelier. However, she was not even so very talented, merely stubborn and ambitious. She had 'sisu'. Oh yes, she, who hated Finland, had more Finn in her than anyone else I ever knew. And she was not stupid, either, not like most other stubborn girls. Oh no, not her. She was very sly and clever. I think she loved me perhaps because I was the first fellow she had met who noticed or could appreciate this. And who still could stand to be around her for very long, I mean.

Actually, rereading this last paragraph, it is amazing how much of her fantasies really did come true. We really did move to Stockholm, though of course, not with each other. And she has been in many films. And in the end, I really did move to Paris, too. So the French classes came in very handy. But next I will tell you how, just nine months or so after we were together, she suddenly left me. And after that, naturally, things were never quite the same between us. But first I need a drink, so I will need to find a good bar. Perhaps I will drag the iBook along with me and blog from there. Ihop! That's Swedish for 'Off we go!'

OK, here I am back again. I am logged onto a wifi network of some sort, but the signal is very weak. I am sitting in a bar called Kipinä on Vuorikatu. It has polished wooden tables and yellow curtains and a nice view of the tram junction. I think I will be moving on soon. I only selected it because it is so dark and boring and therefore there is absolutely no chance of meeting the Strawberry or the Gollum and Dr Pretorius or anyone else I know here, although I must still be very cautious not to come across Vaino again in the street. Who would have ever imagined that only hours after landing here and quite by accident, I would have managed to meet the one person in Finland I totally did not want to see? Well, that is so typical of life, isn't it? It has happened to me on more than one occasion in Rockefeller Plaza. Especially after dumping someone. However, if I wish to remain anonymous here, I will have to stay on the move, which will also require me to drink more or less continuously. I am willing to commit to this.

Stina. Sometimes I wonder what my life might have been like if she had never left me at all. Would we have been sweethearts forever, perhaps? Married eventually and had two children? Would I have become a doctor and she the director of a theatre school, as she is now? Imagine, if that had all happened, instead of being happy and successful and wealthy, as Likkanen is now, he would just be a dull, boring old Finnish fellow driving an old yellow Volvo to work every day, LOL! And instead of 2,999 corpses inside my cavern there would be only a dozen or so, if you count Matti as just one person. Which I suppose she was. The barmaid here looks quite a bit like Matti, but of course, is young enough to be her daughter. Or even grand-daughter, if we were in New Jersey. Of course, I had known for months that Stina was madly applying to every theatre school in Scandinavia. Well, all except for the Finnish ones, that is. I guess I just thought she was too young or that her marks were too poor and that she would never actually be accepted into any. But one afternoon when her parents were away, she greeted me at her front door with that slight flush of excitement, that calculating sideways look and half-smile I had grown to know so well. She was fond of greeting me at her front door in surprising ways. Sometimes I would find a trail of notes or clues leading up to her bedroom. Or the bath. One time she met me wearing only the open front page of the 'Hufvudstadsbladet'. Today, however, she was wearing all her clothes. And that expression.

'I have some wonderful news!' she said. 'Only, well, you aren't going to like it.' I did not react. I was too young to have learned that when people say these words to you--women, dentists, doctors, for example--you are really, really going to hate it, whatever 'it' is. But of course, she often spoke to me dramatically like this if she had decided not to go to a film that night or if for some reason we couldn't bonk. Like if her grandmother was staying over. So I assumed that was all this was. 'I got accepted into theatre school. In Odense.'

'Odense?' I had no idea where that was.

'In Denmark. It's where Hans Christian Andersen was born.' I thought from her tone that she was very disappointed. She had set her heart on Teaterhögskolan in Stockholm, which is their prestigious Royal Dramatic Academy, like RADA is in London. So naturally I decided it would be easy to dissuade her. After all, I would have months to try.

'When will you go?' I asked her, my heart sinking at the very thought.

'In three weeks,' she said, bravely fighting back tears. I realized at once from this of course that actually she was quite happy and thrilled to be going, even though it wasn't Teaterhögskolan. Bravely fighting back tears was an expression she practiced rather often, based on a face she made during--well, never mind. 'But we'll see each other on holidays. And you'll come visit me there. This is only temporary, until we can move to Stockholm.' I didn't believe her, of course. I was no more a fool than she was. Well, not much more of one. But I discovered to my very great surprise that I wanted to believe her, which in some ways is even worse.

Ah, I will have to move to a different bar soon. The young barmaid has started flirting with me. She is looking at herself in the mirror and fidgeting with her hair. I know what you are thinking. Oh ho, Donho, you are saying, you think every woman wants you. Well, only the pretty ones, anyway. But no, no, this time it is perfectly true. BTW, several young dudes have messaged me at this blog recently asking for 'sex tips'. To them I will say only, observe closely now. The barmaid does not 'want me' because she is playing with her hair; not at all. Young dudes who believe this when they see a woman are fools. Women play with their hair in public whenever they feel self-conscious, which is almost always. Or at least whenever they feel men are watching. Or other women. What a tragedy for the world it is that Likkanen, who has so much bonking wisdom to impart, has so little time to do it now! And of course I have Stina to thank for so much of it. She taught me everything I know about zoology, just as Likki taught me about biology. And physics. You see, to the scientific eye the young woman at the bar is not just a 'woman', at all--women are not a single species, anyway-- she is a 'Matti'. Nature evolves very few true phenotypes, without beginning to repeat itself. And it is shocking but true that often people who resemble each other greatly physically share many of the same character traits, as well. So I can tell just by looking at this girl that she is bored, self-conscious, romantic, a bit overweight, a bit too generous in her affections. All of this from my intimate knowledge of Matleena those many years ago. And most important of all; she is myopic. Look at her big soft eyes glancing over shyly in my direction; all she can see is a male outline, a white blob for a shirt, a tanned lean generic older face. But that's OK, she likes older men. And she knows I am a foreigner, because Finnish men have no clothing sense; they either wear T-shirts with stupid slogans on them or else dress like the Mafia in dandruffy dark shirts with even darker ties. I have seen men wearing every crazy color in the world since I have arrived in Helsinki; they all look like Russian cabbies in LA. I suppose the seasons must keep them eternally confused over their proper plumage. But back to this barmaid: like most young women, she is very nearsighted, which is a kindness of nature. Because as she grows older, a woman's vision sharply reverses itself and gradually becomes very farsighted instead, able to read a line of email on a man's computer screen from the next room--or foresee when a relationship with him has no future. You can Google this, it is a scientific fact.

It was Stina who first taught me how to dress, as well. Oddly, her best advice came in her letters after she was away studying at theatre school. 'Most men dress to please women,' she wrote me once. "Never make this mistake, Lemo, darling. Always dress as if you are too rich to care how you look. Whatever else you are wearing, be sure to wear an expensive white dress shirt, so that it will seem as if you have just come from a party to which no one else has been invited. It's quite all right for your jeans or your jacket to be shabby--in fact, the older, the better--but you must take care that your shoes are very, very expensive and come from an exclusive shop. Everyone judges each other by their shoes; you can tell everything from them. Your socks are your own affair.' And indeed, I have followed this advice to the letter ever since. I have all my shoes hand-tooled from lathes cast from my feet at a shop in London's Savile Row and then shipped to me wherever I am in the world. But I have discovered a strange thing about socks over the years; secretly, women hate the thin ones, the tight ones, the colored ones, the translucent ones, the dark ones that go to the knee or end below the ankle. Leave these for the gay blades. You know what women really like? Thick white fluffy ones. Yes, it's true, such socks seem soft and cozy to them, like bunny feet on pajamas, and when worn with black hand-tooled leather dress shoes give a man a nice virile Finnish blue-collar image, making a subliminal promise of some great rough bonking ahead and a bit of soft cuddling in between. This is why women love men in uniforms. The socks. The other great Finnish contribution to success with women is polite silence. I have learned long ago never to make the 'small talk' with them, just to half-smile and appear to agree with whatever stupid nonsense they are saying. This way they are able to project any emotions they wish onto my 'meaningful expressions'. And again, it was Stina who first suggested that I should keep my mouth shut.

It made me uncomfortable to imagine how Stina was discovering such useful insights, so I refused to think about it. Much. Besides, she was very open on the subject, as she was on all others: 'We must be very, very faithful to each other, Lemo, if we are to survive as a couple. What that means is it's OK to kiss other women when you are out on dates with them--I must allow you that, because theatre people are always kissing each other, though it means nothing to us. But you are different, my dearest; to you a kiss means something, so you must promise not to do it with other girls too often, or I will worry. And no sex! This is a very definite rule for both of us, no matter how tempted and unsatisfied we might feel after an evening of kissing only. But we must save ourselves for each other. ' In those days, there was no name for an 'LDR' or Long Distance Relationship. Few people even tried to have them. There was no email then, no instant messaging, no Internet, no cell-phones, no web-cam. We exchanged a letter or two a week, and then a long-distance telephone call on the weekend. And of course, she came back at Joulu. But she had already changed quite a bit by then. For one thing, she was now a blonde.

OK, the barmaid has actually drifted over here to talk to me now. Up close, I can see many tattoos and piercings, including a sort of stud that dangles from her nostrils, like a shiny bit of metal mucus. Frankly, this is disgusting to Likkanen. Perhaps I am just too old for women any more. Anyhoo, I am going to find a new bar, BRB.

Next time: Something rotten in Denmark.

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Don Juan in Helsinki: 17

But of course I fell asleep after all at some point that night. And naturally it was horrible, much worse than I was fearing. It turns out Stina is no easier to swallow after all this time, not even in a dream. I don't think it would have been quite so terrible if only I had some method of cooking her, a charcoal fire, perhaps, or a Tuscan grill. Properly broiled, the flavour might really be quite mild. People say human flesh tastes like pork, but that turns out to not be true. IMHO it is very much like beef, only tenderer and more lean. And saltier. But raw, it is not so good. Of course I was eating long strips from the upper arms and thighs, but perhaps the next time I doze off I will try the heart or a bit of liver. If I can find her heart, of course--not such an easy task with Stina, ROFL! Worst of all was to wake up with the taste in my mouth; rather like after oral surgery but much more disgusting. To be truthfully honest, I don't think I could ever develop a taste for it, like that fellow in those Hannibal Lector movies. I think they must be fiction.

And you know what else is bothering me? I don't feel that for me to be cursed by these dreams is so very fair! No, no, not at all; I have done nothing to deserve this fate. I have devoted my life to pleasing women, not to preying upon them. Yes, it is true! No woman has ever bonked with me except by her own choice and her own desire. I have never stalked or bullied any of them or made any false promises or told them any lies. At least not at first. Naturally, one has to later after a few weeks when they start to want a 'relationship'. But this is not my fault; I did not create women and men the way they are. I am not God! (Though some of my former lovers may not believe this! ;) ) And I have worked very very hard indeed all through the years to give these women pleasure. Oh yes. I have studied for it like for medical school. I have spent half my life at the gym or under the sunlamp. I have even subscribed to magazines for many years in the hopes of discovering new techniques. For years I subscribed to 'Penthouse Magazine', for example. But they never printed any of my letters, so eventually I switched to 'Cosmopolitan' for the sex tips and then lately to 'Mens' Health'. But these just pile up unread now, since I never find anything new in them these days or any technique I have not already invented. Oh yes, it is true! Likkanen could easily write one of those sexual self-help books one always sees on Amazon.com, like 'Five Minutes to Orgasm Every Time You Make Love' or 'The Ultimate Guide to Cunnilingus'. These books make me laugh! Likkanen has personally invented over two dozen different types of oral sex all by himself! And to each of them I have given the name of an animal. For example the 'kitten'. Or the 'butterfly'. Or, most amazing of all for the ladies, the 'elephant' (for which one needs the aid of a rubber sex toy, of course). I do not mock these other guides, but they are all written by women like 'Claire D. Hutchens' or 'Violet Blue', and although I am not a sexist, I think they show very little imagination. Necessity may be the mother of invention, but it is Likkanen who is yo' daddy, LOL! (BTW, several lady readers have messaged to ask about the details of the 'kitten' and the 'butterfly'. Well, imagine the little sandpaper tongue of the kitten as it licks up milk, for example. And for the 'butterfly', I use my eyelashes, of course!) When you make hot sweet squishy monkey sex with Likkanen, you are bonking an entire zoo!

No, no, since those early weeks with Stina, I have never had any problems persuading any of my former lovers to have a relaxed, entertaining, and most pleasurable orgasm. Well, none of them except for just one. And I don't think even Claire D. Hutchens or Violet Blue themselfs could have given that particular lady one of those delightful things, not even working as a team. I know what you are thinking. Oh ho, Donho, you are saying, I suppose you are not going to tell us this lady's name. You are too scared to. Well you are wrong, I will say it. I do not care if her lawyers sue me; I imagine they are too busy to these days anyway. She was Likkanen's greatest, most miserable defeat in all his many years of bonking. Her name was Christie Brinkley, but of course i could not remember that in those days before she was so famous. So my name for her then was 'Twiglet.' We met at the famous 'Club 54' in Manhattan (not the first one, the second more boring one) sometime in 1981 or '82, I think. Until this minute, I had blotted it from my mind. Thank you so much for making me think of her! Hyee! Now I cannot stop.

Like so many other great disasters in my life, this one began as a favour to a friend. How often this is so! One would think that by now I would be too wise ever to agree to any act of kindness to others, no matter how selfish the reason, but in this case I could not refuse. I have only had three good friends in my whole life. One was Bjorn Walroos, of course. Another was Johan Fremin. And the third was the late Lou Stathis. And on this night Lou needed me to be his 'wing-man'. He was very crazily in love with a beautiful fashion model, but she would not go out with him unless her best friend could come along, too.

What is a wing-man, you ask? Well, this is a sad fate that all men must experience out of friendship, even Likkanen, at some time or another. I am sure you have seen the beer commercials on the subject; in fact, I believe someone has even made a film of it. And I know for a fact there is a Country-Western song. It is when one man sacrifices himself to be a false 'date' for a very ugly girl so that his friend can be with a pretty one for the evening. Because it is a law of nature that any man learns very soon--ugly girls and pretty girls always go together. For a pretty girl it is a chance to make herself look even prettier by contrast--and to have someone around who will actually listen to her stupid conversation for hours and hours at a time. For the ugly girl, of course, the rewards are even greater--she can bathe in the reflected glamour of the pretty one, plus she might always inherit a rejected guy. It is nature's way. And we men instinctively understand this. So when my friend Lou asked me to do this favour for him, naturally I agreed. Gentlemen have a code. And he was very honest about it. 'I won't lie to you, Donho,' he said to me, shaking his head in wonder. 'I've seen this chick, and she isn't easy to look at. She doesn't even have nice eyes.'

And he was right, she didn't, poor thing. They were like little black buttons. Even so, if she had not been so sick that evening I might have even given her a nice mercy-bonk out of simple pity. And of course, if I had, I would never have had to endure those weeks of sex from hell with the Twiglet instead. Those little old ladies with their knitting needles were having a good laugh with me on that night, I can tell you!

I believe I have mentioned to you that often women will vomit uninhibitedly around me. Well, never has any of them puked so fast as this one did! Poor Lou. For weeks, he had worked to make this a 'perfect date'. He had pulled every string he could at his magazine publishing house to get reservations for dinner at the 'Russian Tea Room' and then for after at 'Club 54' (neither of these places was so easy to get into at all in those days.) Then he had sold some rare vinyl albums of his and eaten nothing but candy bars for a whole week in order to save up the money to pay for the evening. This model he was so crazy for was no Christie Brinkley, BTW, she was instead a nice quiet Italian American girl, very tall and thin and blonde with a long face and flared nostrils, who reminded me of a Palomino horse. So this was my secret name for her. She had done a lot of work in Milan and for Roman fashion magazines. But for some reason she was shy. She was too shy even to go out on this date without her friend, who was very short and dark-haired and looked exactly like Porky Pig's girlfriend, Priscilla in the cartoons, even to her upturned nose one could see inside and the way she styled her hair. But Priscilla's family was very, very rich. She was a cousin of the Rockefellers or something and lived in a brownstone townhouse on the Upper West Side. Apparently she had been on very few dates in her life, however, because she became so nervous waiting for us that she drank several White Russians with her friend in the hour before. So when Lou and I arrive in our best clothes with two great bundles of flowers in our arms, she opens the front door, has a single look at me, and 'BLAAAT!' She pukes all over the top of an ornamental shrub outside. Then she runs away crying. So, perhaps not the best start for a big date!

Next the Palomino comes to the door and lets us in, whispering excuses. Her friend is very nervous, had too much to drink, etc. Priscilla is lying on a couch resting. The Palomino sits beside her and strokes her temples with a damp cloth, like a Pre-Raphaelite painting by Burne-Jones or Millais, perhaps. She is obviously a very motherly sort, and in fact in later life she will marry an Italian businessman who launders money for the Mafia and serves time in jail for this. I know these things because I will meet her again by accident 12 or 15 years later in a SuperFresh in suburban New Jersey pushing a huge shopping-cart with three small children in it. To be perfectly honest with you, I think fashion models are quite possibly the stupidest women on the planet. I have never had a single intelligent conversation with any of the many ones I have bonked. In addition, most of them have deep psychological problems and are often attracted to very controlling and abusive men like gangsters. Or artists. But, of course, we know nothing of all that now. Lou is very nice and patient and asks her if we should cancel the evening and do it another time; love has obviously driven him quite insane. From Priscilla on the couch rises up a wailing, 'Oh no!' She is sure she will recover, she just needs a few minutes to rest. She has been looking forward to tonight so much. She is wearing a ghastly short black dress which shows off her ghastly short, plump legs; however, like many fat women, she has lovely little feet. I try to remain focused on her feet throughout the rest of our time together. Finally, after 45 minutes or so of wailing and head-bathing and toilet-visiting, we are ready to go. 'I hope I have not made too bad a first impression on you,' she says to me. Ha!

At the Russian Tea Room I order blintzes and latkes and other Jewish dishes, because I am feeling a bit homesick, and Ukrainian food is very very much like Karelian. All these tiny old Jewish grandmothers you see in Manhattan would have been great prizes in Finland, where cooking is traditionally valued in a woman above everything else; perhaps they emigrated to the wrong place to look for husbands. Priscilla Pig, however, is not homesick--but she is still a bit carsick, so she orders very little. Naturally, this means that by the time our meals arrive, she is quite hungry, so she picks and nibbles from mine. The job of a wingman is not just to fill a seat; he must also pry the ugly one from the pretty one so that his friend can spend time alone with her. So not only do I let this person rummage through my food with her porky little fingers, I am forced to actually make conversation with her as well. Here is a typical example:

'Oh, you're from Finland? I've been there! That's where our plane used to land to refuel on the way to Europe. There wasn't a single tree.'

'No, no, that is Iceland. Finland is a country in eastern Europe.'

'Oh, right! Duh! You must be so proud of Lech Walensa.'

Nature has at least compensated her by making her very rich. But what about the millions and millions of girls like her who are not? It is hardly fair. They should all sue someone for compensation! This thought makes my eyes fill up with tears. Likkanen loves all beautiful women equally, even the poor and the stupid ones. I sneak a peek across the thick white candlelit tablecloth at Lou and the whispering Palomino. He is being very wry and amusing and is making her laugh. Oh Lou, Lou, I think in despair--how many times must I tell you? To bonk a married lady, you first make her laugh. To bonk a virgin, you must first make her cry. A woman who is experienced with men is always very bored with them; to her, laughter is an erotic distraction. But a young girl doesn't yet know she has a heart at all; to make her discover it, you must cause it to hurt a little. Lou is a big strapping sardonic guy who looks and even talks a bit like the movie actor Hank Azaria. Everyone wants to be his friend, and women like him very much. But still he commits this foolish gaucherie. And in a public place on a first date! I sigh with frustration. Hearing it, the Pig falls silent. It is about that time she begins to drink seriously.

By the time we get to 'Studio' on West 54th, as the regulars call it, she is quite drunk. I have arrived in New York too late to see the glory days of this place, and besides, neither Lou nor I is a disco sort of person. Dancing is too much hard work for us. So there are not so many celebrities here tonight in this huge, glittering dark barn full of noise and flashing lights, except for a few of them who are always hanging about like barflies, such as the clothes designer Halston or Margeaux Hemingway. And of course, the era of American 'disco music' is dead, so they are playing European hits from Sparks and Munich and M-Machine, etc. But to the Palomino, it is heaven. So we all order Cuba Libres and then do some cocaine together--and after that, naturally, Priscilla starts puking again. Soon our table looks like the statue of La Pieta, with Priscilla in the role of Jesus, lying on a tablecloth draped between two chairs. Caroline Kennedy comes over to say hello; apparently the two of them have been to school together. 'Oh, she's always thick,' she lisps dismissively. The Palomino deserts her duty as Madonna long enough to visit the bar. She has spotted an old friend from her Eurotrash jet-setting days; it is Christie Brinkley, or Twiglet as I already am thinking of her. Her face is familiar to me--I have seen her several times at the American Bar and Closerie des Lilas in Paris. We say 'salut'.

'What's with your friend?' she asks. Her teeth are huge, even bigger than the Strawberry's. And she is even taller than the Strawberry. In fact, both of them share the same type of healthful, athletic Midwestern good looks, but of course, the Strawberry is much prettier and more feminine. I am surprised to find myself thinking that. What a shame she is such a clinging, nagging sort of person that I have to avoid her. But back to 1981 (or '82?). At the mention of Priscilla, who is now causing a dramatic commotion on the other side of the dance-floor, the Palomino is guilt-stricken and rushes back to our table, after soaking a napkin in cold water.

'She cannot control her vomiting,' I tell Twiglet. 'It is some sort of disorder.'

'Oh, yeah--it's called bluemeenia or something. Lots of girls in the industry get that. They put their fingers down their throat every time they gain an ounce.' Like me, Twiglet has just dumped her first husband in Paris and moved to New York. She has been signed by the Ford Agency to be the face for Cover Girl cosmetics, she tells me. 'That's why I can't eat peanuts.' Now, I will be honest with you. We have no secrets from each other now. There is something about this Twiglet woman I find deeply annoying and irritating. This is my instinct trying to warn me to stay away from her. I don't know whether it is her brisk sense of self-importance, her awkward, graceless manner, or her habit of saying aloud whatever pops into her head, no matter how rude or stupid it is, but something about her makes me dislike her very much. So naturally, I ask her if she wants to bonk. Well, what else can you say in a situation like this? But she just laughs--very loudly, and, I cannot help but feel, a little too long--and goes off with some friends. So I go back to the bathroom to do some more coke. I do not do drugs often, you understand. Being Finnish, I am naturally too thrifty to pay for them. But tonight they are free. And I can tell I will need something to get me through the rest of this evening. As I inhale I notice there are puddles of piss on the tiles beneath the stalls. Why is this always the case in men's toilets? And these could have been made by Andy Warhol or Elton John or even Sylvester Stallone! You would think they would have better manners. I have never made such a puddle in my life. A true Finn is very clean and tidy, no matter how drunk he is. Except on a sidewalk, of course. The bathroom is veneered in white-veined black marble, with rows of bright little dressing-room lights around the mirrors. I look up to find Twiglet in one of them. 'OK,' she says, smiling. Uh oh...

Next time: Next: Likkanen's sexiest secrets exposed...

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Don Juan in Helsinki: 16

So did Stina get the part? Surely, even though she corpsed one of her lines, and some of the other girls were much prettier. So why am I thinking of Stina, anyway? Because now I am walking back toward the city centre again and past the old Swedish Theatre, a round white landmark building filled with tourists today. How many hours have I spent inside that building, most of them while I waited for Stina, though I have also designed stage lighting there later. I am on my way back to the Torni to pack my bags. I have a reservation now at the Raddisson Grand Marina overlooking the harbour, and my spirits have lifted at last. It is at least a 4-Star hotel and some guidebooks even list it as a 5! This good enough for me! The suite will be much nicer and the bathroom twice as big. And best of all, no more Strawberry.

It is at that particular moment I catch a glimpse of a blue beret in the sea of faces on the sidewalk in front of me. At once my heart starts to race in my chest, and I cross the street very quickly against the traffic to catch up with him. Pedestrians part in front of me, and I see his face quite clearly for an instant, before he turns and tries to scamper away. At once I break into a run to chase after him. Close up, he looked even weirder than from far away. He exactly resembles a shaved cat, with huge very pale blue eyes swimming with liquid and a little patch of fine white fur on his wobbling head. Even his movements as he runs are strangely animal, as he has been forced upright and stuffed into his golf shirt and shorts. His bright gold Birkenstocks slap up and down on the pavement ahead of me; people stare in surprise as we race by. Has he stolen my camera? Picked my pocket? Finns consider it very rude and aggressive to chase a person even if he has--the police are expected to catch all criminals--but they are all too soporific from the the sun and their own hangovers to interfere. Now, despite the fact that I am very fit and healthful of course, as are all true Finns, it has been some years since I have run this fast, so i am quite a bit red in the face and out of breath by the time I come close enough to catch him. Which, as it happens, is the main lobby doorway outside the Hotel Torni--where I was going anyway. But now, blocking my path, is the most extraordinary person I have ever seen in my life, even stranger than the Gollum in the blue beret, who cowers behind him for protection.

I will take some moments now to describe this individual, because like it or not, he will be important to my story. And I do not like that fact, particularly right at this instant, because he is swaying from side to side nudging me with his huge belly, his great fat arms extended like two hams, saying in Swedish, 'Herr Likkanen, Herr Likkanen, forgive me, this is all my fault. This is not how I planned to meet you, but please, please, first you must calm down.' And so, after a bit, I do. After all, I really have no choice, do I? By the way, Swedish has no 'please' either, just like Finnish, but he is employing the old-fashioned 'be so good'. Which isn't really quite the same, is it? But it will have to do. 'I am Dr Ivar Pretorius,' he says, extending five little sausage fingers for me to shake. You will figure from these remarks that this Dr Pretorius is short and fat. He is very very fat. In fact, he is the grossest, fattest man I have ever seen in my life. He looks exactly like a big round butter-ball dressed, despite the heat, in a formal dark three-piece suit. Over this, he is wearing a dark blue cape like a stage magician! But worse is to come! Everything about his head is perfectly round as well, beneath gleaming little piggy eyes sunk deep into his red cheeks, he has red moustaches and a triangular goatee in imitation of King Gustav Adolf of Sweden, the famous 17th-Century 'Lion of the North'. On top of his egg-like head lies a sweaty blob of thick red-gold hair arranged in heavy oily curls. One comes down to cover the top of his forehead like a comma.The very sight of him fills me with disgust; not only his great fatness, but also his obvious connection with Gollum. Is he the Gollum's 'master'? Is this who ordered him to search my room? How does he even know my name? What are two such repulsive people doing in my life? They are certainly not spies or secret policemen, at any rate--no country would employ them, not even Sweden. Whatever, I do not want to know them. I brush past him, and flee like a celebrity through the lobby to the elevator. I will go upstairs and pack, and from the front desk have the bell captain arrange for a Taksi for me. Then I will check in at the Radisson and be safe.

But life is never that easy, is it? The moment I am outside on the pavement about to get into my cab, here is this horrible great fat fellow again jostling me and getting in my way. 'Please, Mr Likkanen,' he has switched to English. 'We must talk. Please. I have flown all the way from Stockholm just to meet you. I want to make with you a business proposition.' Well, that makes all the difference of course. Likkanen always can use a new customer. In fact, I become almost excited at the idea. Could he be a representative from the giant Svenska Metall, perhaps? Or a smaller one, Fagersta or Sandvik? Perhaps he is an eccentric millionaire owner of one of these smaller firms--this would explain his bizarre appearance. The rich are not like you and me, they never look in mirrors (in this, I am very very wrong, as you will see; this fellow spends his life in front of mirrors). What the devil is he a 'doctor' of, I wonder?

'Yo, javist,' I say to him. We will speak for the rest of the time in Swenglish, which I will not try to reproduce for you here. Take my word for it, it is far more comprehensible than Finglish. 'I'm just taking this cab. Why don't you join me, and we'll find a quiet place to talk.' The doctor is skipping along beside me on the sidewalk now, the Gollum skulking along behind. When we reach the Taksi, there is a problem; after the driver puts my bags in the trunk, we discover that Dr Pretorius cannot fit inside the car. He is too fat. The driver and the Gollum pull the front passenger seat forward as far as it will go, but even when the doctor is physically jammed into the back by them, using an ice scraper for a shoe-horn, his door still never quite shuts. A small crowd gathers to stare at this amazing sight. Finally off we go, the Gollum, whom the doctor has still never acknowledged the existence of or introduced to me, in the front, me wedged somehow in the back seat with my iBook and designer backpack.

'Take us to Helsinki's most expensive bar,' I tell the Taksi driver. Instinct tells me I do not want these two to know where my new hotel is. Whatever their business is, it is likely to be crazy business. But even I cannot yet imagine just how crazy.

'Herr Likkanen, may I ask how well did you know your grandfather?' says the fat man.

'My grandfather?' I say, very surprised by his question. What has my grandfather to do with my business?

'Your grandfather was Frederik Wilander, yes?'

'Yes, yes, of course, He died three years ago,' In fact, the last time I saw him was in 1983 during my mother's funeral. He looked very old and frail to me then, yet somehow he managed to live on for another twenty years all alone in his large flat at Odenplan.

'Your grandfather was a very great man. A very great man indeed, perhaps the most powerful personality in Scandinavia,' the doctor is saying now. Tears have actually sprung to his eyes, and he dabs at them with a little embroidered handkerchief. 'Certainly he was the nexus of the kingdom of Sweden. He was everything to me for many years--my dear friend, my mentor, my teacher. You are indeed privileged to have sprung from his stock. You knew, of course, that he was a Nazi?'

Oh God, so that is what all of this is about. Someone from Svenska Dagbladet called me in New York after his death and tried to get me talk about this. 'This is old news,' I say firmly. 'He was a national socialist, yes, but he never went to Germany or anything like that. Lots of Swedes of his generation held such stupid beliefs. Big deal. They are all dead now.' Well, all but the skinheads with their swastikas tattooed all over themselves. Surely this fat fellow, who appears to be about my age, is not one of them. He is waving his hand in the air in apparent relief.

'Of course, of course. For him all that was really just a hobby. I will tell you confidentially, all of us who were his brothers in the Lodge were very embarrassed by it. We are not political at all.' He says this last in a stage whisper. 'Lodge?', I think. Uh oh.

'Tell me truly, sir,' he goes on, his voice still very low, 'What do you know about magical belief systems?'' When I hear these words I give out a loud cry of annoyance and bury my head in my hands. Has the whole world gone mad? Is it now impossible to sell plumbing fixtures without belief in magic and fairytales and UFOs and the planet Gor??? It doesn't even have to be plumbing fixtures--I am an artist. I would happily sell drawings I make with a stick in the sand, if only i don't have to put up with such nonsense. I can tell I will need lots of viina tonight, as well as many cups of coffee.

I blame the Internet. No one believed in all these crazy things before it was invented. Life was simple. In fact, it was quite a bit like drawing with a stick in the sand. I know what you are thinking of course. Oh ho, Donho, you are saying, what do you know of poverty with your successful company, your expensive Manhattan loft, your Bluetooths and your iPods, and your 5-Star hotels, LOL! But actually, I would love to be able to afford the luxury to live in a mud hut in the Amazon myself. This is something important you should know about me, because it is key to understanding my complex personality. For example, my very favorite job that I ever had in my whole life was a bit like drawing in the mud with a stick.

When I was 15 or so I decided for some reason to work during my summer holidays down at the Kouppatori Morning Market Square selling ice cream to tourists. This ambition astonished my parents. Well, to be fair, any ambition on my part astonished them. Now, in those days, we did not have the entire summer off as you Americans do; we had all of July free, most of December for Joulu, two weeks around Easter, and many traditional and former religious holidays as well, rather like in Catholic countries. We also had a half-day of school on Saturdays every week, if you can imagine that. Even the weekend is an American invention. Why I decided to work at all, I cannot recall; it's possible I was saving up for something, a Vespa perhaps. But a true Finn loves to work. Now, there was no Sun Ice in those days, no Movenpick, no imported Baskin-Robbins or Ben & Jerry's. The company I worked for, Maanviljelijäin Maitokeskus, only even made ice cream in summer. My stall sold just three flavours: vanilla, chocolate, and either lemon, licorice, berry, or, for some strange reason, peppermint, depending on the day. There weren't so many tourists buying ice cream, either, and much of the market square still shut down at noon, so often I had free time on my hands. From boredom, I somehow got the crazy idea into my head to sketch caricatures of people and charge money for them. With my first wages, I bought an easel, a huge pad of drawing paper, and a set of water-colour pens and made a little sign. It was a terrific success. All afternoon long, families of Norweigians, Swedes, Germans, and British brought their children or their grannies over to me to have their profiles drawn--often I would add little cartoonish touches to make them laugh. so they would buy more ice cream. In the evenings, when the sunlight became cloudy and dim, and lights would go on at the hotels nearby, sometimes some of the girls would slip out to see me again. I would practice my English on those who spoke it, and we might go for long walks holding hands in the Esplanadi and even do a bit of snogging in the dusk of midnight. Once or twice even some bonking in the park. This is all I really want from life. just to sell my drawings, to eat some ice cream, to bonk a beautiful girl, and then fall asleep beside her and have lovely nice dreams. Likkanen could be happy forever only with that. Likkanen is really a most simple dude.

I raise my head from my hands and tell the driver, 'Make that a bar that sells ice cream.' He drops us off a few blocks away at the Mecca on Korkeavuorenkatu, not the best bar in the city, but certainly the most expensive. And the one which, I suspect, pays him the most to deposit tourists at its door. However, it will do perfectly, as it turns out; upstairs in the second-floor lounge, I can check in my bags, and there are plenty of enormous leather couches to house the vast bulk of Dr Pretorius. Since it is lunchtime, the place is mostly empty, and 'DJ Peppermint' is several hours away from arriving with his 'mix of eclectic, openminded house music', as advertised.

Sweating, Dr Pretorius orders both the duck and the veal with licorice-spiced onions, red peppers, and lime puree. By the time it arrives, he will be pink and panting with desire for it. He a is man who would eat the world if he could, it is a serious disorder. I order coffee and viina and the only ice cream they have, which is hazlenut. 'A bowl of milk for your friend?' I ask the doctor, who simply ignores me and plays nervously with his napkin. He has checked in his cloak at the door, with a theatrical flourish. The Gollum sits opposite us, sunk deep into a lounge chair, his white, hairless arms folded over his kneecaps like sticks. His eyes are half-closed and his head rocks up and down slightly on its long, sloping neck, as if he is sniffing the air. Occasionally his eyes will widen, and he will stare intently at something and open his mouth as if to speak--or feed--but he never does. He seems like the survivor of some terrible disease, AIDS, perhaps, or a profound mental illness. Have these two escaped from a lunatic asylum? No, of course not--no one could stay so fat eating in such a place. Or so thin. It is as if the doctor is eating, drinking, and talking for the both of them. Perhaps the Gollum does the bonking. Certainly such a fat man is not capable of it; beneath the pin-striped folds of his tent-like trousers, I notice, his belly completely hangs over his groin. But I do not question him how he manages a bonking life. I do not want to think of such things. it is disgusting to me. 'How did you know I would be in Helsinki?' I ask him instead.

'I have been in contact with your office for months. A Mr Jesper Pedersen,' he replies. 'He has been very helpful.'

'I assume you are not from Svensk Metall?'

'Oh no, it is not plumbing I wish to buy from you. It is something worth far more.' He licks his lips. 'Worth many millions of euros. I hope we can come to some sort of arrangement quickly.'

I shrug. 'I'm sure we can. But I'm very confused what it is you want to buy from me.'

'Oh, I'm sure you know what I am talking about, Herr Likkanen,' he says sharply. He is so melodramatic, that I am almost expecting him to say he wants to buy my 'soul'. But of course, that is quite a silly thought. My soul certainly isn't worth any millions of euros, ROFL! I can let him have that quite cheap.

'Not at all. I assume it's something you couldn't find when you looked in my hotel room.' When he hears this, he gives a great start of surprise and turns even pinker, then makes a few passes in the air with his hands,

'Ah ha, you have inherited the astral eye from your grandfather. I thought you knew much more than you pretended. Yes, I admit it, I am one of the two or three most powerful magicians in Scandinavia. Your grandfather, of course, was much greater, but now there is another here even more so. That is why I cannot stay here long, sir; the penumbra of Finland is very hostile and diffuse. The solar energies are far stronger than the lunar, on which I depend. Of course, that is typical of this time of year.' He shivers and, leaning forward, lowers his voice again dramatically. 'Even in the ancient Eddas the Finns were considered the most evil magicians; the one who rules this place now frightens even me.'

'By magicians,' I say, 'You mean stage magicians, I take it. Like at children's parties.'

This sends him into gales of bubbling, chin-wobbling laughter. Even the Gollum cocks his head and looks sympathetic, as if he would like to join in. 'Yo, yo,' the doctor splutters, 'Stage magicians! The Wilander wit. How I have missed it.' Our drinks arrive: coffee and viina for me, coffee and a vat of Coca-Cola for the doctor. The Mecca Lounge is dim even with the afternoon sunlight radiating through its curtains; everything is earthtones, brown and beige, which to be honest is just a bit last year. Music whispers from the ceiling, lounge classics from 60s TV shows mixed with the latest tracks from Ibiza, and rarest of Scandinavian luxuries, air conditioning drifts over to us from the gleaming chromium bar, bearing with it the cool smell of spirits and wood polish.

'How much do you know of your family history?'

'I hate history,' I tell him.

'I will tell you something of it then, Herr Likkanen. Forgive me, but you are not being honest with me. You are a very stubborn man to deal with.' I cannot shut him up, so I treat him as I would any sexy woman--I forget what he says as soon as he says it and just think of bonking. My problem is that I have no one specifically to imagine bonking with at this moment, so I find myself thinking of the Strawberry instead. Ugh! His meal arrives. But still Dr Pretorius keeps talking.

'The history of Swedish magic begins even before the birth of our greatest mystic, Emmanuel Swedenbourg,' he says in Swedish now, cracking a duck bone with trembling anticipation. I cannot fail to notice that he has not washed his hands. 'In 1346, in fact, when the "Brotherhood of Swedish Magicians" was formed in Stockholm. Since then we have survived many wizard wars and religious persecutions; if you are ever interested in the details, I have written a book on the subject. In 1908, there was a great rebellion against its Grand Master, Count Orlando Staaf, by a group of younger mages led by Tiberius de Wrang, Oscar Krook, and his wife Signe. The Krooks' daughter, Fairgun, married Frederik--she was your grandfather--and when Krook died in 1949, your grandfather Frederik became 'Alderman' of the magical chantry, as the Grand Master was now termed by the rebel mages. Now, Frederik, as you know, had been very influenced by the Aryan mystical cults popular in Europe in his youth, such as the Ordanen and Thule groups, so he was very sympathetic to the German Nazis. Among them, he had many close friendships and contacts, which is how he came into possession of the document we now wish to purchase from you.' Finishing the duck in a few greedy mouthfuls, Dr Pretorius now turns his attention to the veal. His napkin is tucked into his cravat like a great bib; streams of grease trickle down his chins. 'Then comes the threat from Finland.' He gestures with his fork. 'In order to cement an alliance between the two countries, Frederik marries your mother. Frika, into the family of the Finnish mages. And all goes well, until you are born. Then the alliance ends, I'm not quite sure why. But from that point on, you might say the "magical essences" of the two kingdoms are at war again. Only you can bring them back together again.'

'Me?' Ah, at last I understand. I am really Harry Potter! Of course, now everything makes sense, ROFL!

'There are many types of magic, Herr Likannen. There is the magic of the individual, whether earthly or etheric. There is the magic of the Invisibles, who come in many shapes and forms and histories. There are the adepts, the Awakened Masters, like myself. And there is the magic of stones and trees, of locii, of cities, even of whole countries and kingdoms. The racial identity of a people is a form of necromancy by itself. Roma was a goddess as well as a unifying idea. Your grandfather believed in this; this was the principle he was attempting to refine when he had his youthful flirtation with National Socialism. This was what he was still working on when he became senile. But he was not working from a tabula rasa, oh no, quite the reverse. He was in possession of a guidebook, which, no matter how coarsely and profanely written, was also an occult Rosetta's Stone. You ask how I know? Because I have seen it, touched it, read a few pages from it--Frederik permitted me this before he locked it away. You are his heir, sir; somewhere in his effects is the document we are seeking. I can say no more aloud. I do not want the Finnish warlock to overhear this conversation.' I shouldn't think you would want anyone to overhear it, I think to myself--particularly a shrink, LOL!

'I can honestly say, I totally don't have a clue what you're talking about,' I tell him instead, finishing my ice cream. All this talk has made me surprisingly hungry. For some time I have been observing the doctor's companion, the Gollum. I am trying to imagine this poor creature as a normal person, able to talk and to eat and move about without creeping and cowering, because he is reminding me of somebody I know. He is about thirty or so, I decide, and might even be a handsome sort of fellow if he were not obviously mad and anoerexic. Then suddenly, I realize who he resembles: me...in fact, he looks quite a bit like me! Perhaps instead of a secret daughter, I really have some sort of secret son.

'Of course, you are a businessman. You must entertain other offers. I understand this. Let us merely say, the Swedish Chantry cannot afford to be out-bid. I will start with an offer of five million.'

'Euros?'

'Dollars. But I strongly suggest you agree quickly, Herr Likkanen. The longer you wait, the more people will come to hear of this, and...well...' He spreads his arms to symbolize catastrophe. 'The document can be stolen, lost, destroyed. Its reality is always very fragile even at the best of times. With such mystical works, meanings can alter after a reading or two. Words begin to swim on the page. Type rubs off on your fingers, ink disappears. Don't delay, is my sincere advice. In fact, I implore you to make up your mind soon, for the sake of the whole world.'

The whole world! Well, I warned you, didn't I? I told you this guy was totally crazy. Now it is important for you to understand this--Likkanen does not believe in magic. No, no, not of any kind, not even astrology signs or lucky numbers. Likkanen believes only in reality, in what his seven senses tell him, and in science. And, of course, in bonking. And the thought of my grandfather being a 'powerful mage'--well this is quite a hilarious idea indeed. My Morfar Frederik was certainly no magician, he never even did any card tricks for me. He was just a sad, lonely old man, a retired chemical engineer who never recovered from his wife and then his daughter's deaths and so went quietly senile in his big empty, lonely apartment. Occasionally I would get letters from his neighbours and once or twice, a bulletin from Swedish Social Services. All this talk of 'wizard wars' and such is just some more Internet craziness IMHO; more than likely this 'Dr Pretorius' and his 'Finnish warlock' are just two Star Trek cultists who have had some big fight at a Trekkie convention over an episode detail or a starship specification or something. Still, I am always very polite to madmen. "Well, I will consider your offer very seriously, of course, once I find out what you are talking about. But now I'm afraid I must really be going. I am taking a short journey to a spa in Oulou, and I don't want to miss my train. But I will email you.' I stand up. We formally exchange handshakes and business cards. 'No, no, don't get up.' I say, smiling, to the Gollum, 'I will see myself out.' It would be weird if he was my long-lost son, wouldn't it? Somehow I am already feeling protective of him. As well as repelled, of course.

To Dr Pretorius I say only, 'I will be in touch with you.'

'Oh yes,' he replies, attacking his veal. 'Oh yes you will. The Invisibles tell me you will be needing a large sum of money very soon.'

Whoa, dude, I am telling myself all the way to the hotel, those are two crazy mothers. And of course, I have no idea what they are even talking about, this 'magical document' they want to buy from me. But...well, there is something I have not quite mentioned to you yet. When my grandfather died in 2003, he left me everything. The flat I sold at once, of course, along with his old furniture--the cash-flow came in very handy at that time. But also there was a safe deposit box of his in a Stockholm bank which I never bothered to have emptied. To be truthfully honest, I had forgotten all about it. There is no key to it, just a number combination, based on a certain date that he once made me memorize. I decide to take a short side trip to Stockholm in the next few days in order to to open up this box and have a look inside. And if there is anything in there that looks like the 'Necronomicon' or whatever, I will be happy to sell it to this great fatheaded moron for $5 million. Who wouldn't? Suddenly Likkanen is happy again. And when Likkanen is happy, the whole world is happy.

The Grand Marina is no Burj Al Arab, but it will do. I check in under the false name of 'Mr Seppä' (ha ha, that means 'Mr Smith' in Finnish), then take a long, luxurious shower in my nice big bathroom. Free of the Gollum following me everywhere and with no Strawberry to nag me, I can do what I like again. My time is my own! I decide to take the new Helsinki Metro out to Itakeskus, the largest indoor mall in all Scandinavia, and go shopping at Stockmann's. I will buy lots of expensive clothes. Then I will stay up all night drinking coffee and viina and eating sweets. And so what if I should happen to fall asleep again? The thought of eating Stina as well isn't really so bad. The prospect of a bit of easy money makes anything more palatable. Though, of course, I think to myself, it's hard to imagine that guy really having $5 million to waste on an old manuscript. But I refuse to let this thought damp my good mood. Perhaps he is an heir, too. Before I go, I check my email again to see if there is any reply from Stina. But still nothing. Except of course many kind messages from lawyers in Nigeria finding heirs to large estates. I need to move on, I decide. Perhaps on Monday I will try to telephone Maarit.

Next time: Wing-man at Studio 54.

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Don Juan in Helsinki: 15

Hey, this is Donho Likkanen. I am still alive. My cancer is in remission today, though I am still feeling a bit ill and have decided it is wiser not to eat quite yet. A true Finn, of course, never actually suffers from a hangover--even the Finnish word for this, 'krapula', had to be imported from abroad, which is positive proof that as a people we are mostly immune to them. Normally, I would go visit the hotel sauna, but today is too hot for that, a real heat wave. Here is the forecast:

Vaantaa, mitattu klo 06:22: 22.5°C, poutaa.
Helsinki, mitattu klo 06:31: 25.2°C, poutaa.
Turku, Auranlaakso, mitattu klo 06:30: 23.3°C, poutaa.

So I am sticking to strong black coffee (with a shot of viina in it, of course) at the moment; perhaps in a few hours I will try a few Finn crisp crackers or even a bite of Karelian pie. Perhaps. Naturally, the Strawberry is nagging me to eat. She is a frustrated mother, one can tell this about her at once, she is almost bursting with it--likely she will have many little Strawberries very soon, which is yet another good reason to avoid her sexually. She will get pregnant if I even blow my nose on her. Oh yes, here she is sitting beside me while I blog, chewing away happily with her big perfect teeth. Do I care if she reads these words? Not at all--it will do her good to see them. She would just blush madly anyway. BTW, her breakfast, if one can call it that, is four 'mushrooms' made from boiled eggs with red tomato slices on top of them, served in a sauce. Finns love to play with their food and turn their dishes into toys. Often marzipan candies are coloured and sculpted to look like fish or animals or little houses or vehicles. With her deep love of bad taste, Finland is a perfect place for the Strawberry. I hope she marries a Finn.

I managed to get her out of my hotel room at about 6 am today, which was already evening for my body's clock and early afternoon for hers. Being young, she will quickly adapt, of course, but I will blunder around in a half-waking daze of sunny night-time for a week or so. This is partly why I will be so stupid, over and over, as you are about to see. This and all the viina. And of course, the effect of being Finnish again after so long. After I woke her up, she found a Finnair business card on the floor on her way out.

'What's this?' she says, holding it up to show me. Something is scribbled in pen on the back. I recognize it with a slight groan.

'It is the telephone number of the stewardess from the airplane,' I say. Suddenly the thought of unsuccessfully trying to bonk that woman makes me feel quite a bit sick, so I take the card and flush it down the toilet. The Strawberry looks at me in astonishment.

'Why did you do that?' she says. 'She was so nice! It would be fun to meet her again and all have drinks together.' Really, is there no end to this girl's stupidity??? I must find another hotel quickly. Because, just a few hours later, while I am lying in bed trying very hard not to fall asleep, there she is at the door again, dragging me off with her to the restaurant. She thinks we are chums together in some college dormitory, obviously (I will tell you about some of my many adventures in these delightful places in another post, when I am feeling a bit less queasy.)

Beside me the Strawberry is chattering away, asking questions from her guidebook. She is very excited, because in an hour or two Riita Koivistu will meet her and take her to the university for the rest of the day. Do I know the university, she asks me? Ha! Do I know Helsinki University? I say nothing, so i won't spoil things for her. Perhaps while she is away this afternoon chasing fairy-tales, I will be able to find another hotel to stay at. That way when she returns, I will be gone. For some reason, this thought fills me with a great joy. And she is young, she will get over it very quickly. She can find some nice young man in this hotel to sleep next to. Another American, perhaps, or a German. They are very clean. Or even the Finn she will someday marry. We are the cleanest of all.

In the meantime, I have other errands to attend to. Yes, I must find a new hotel. But first I must replace my cell-phone and the mini-mouse which lies now somewhere in the limbo of the sewers along with the Finnair stewardess. Already, as I enter the Nokia shop on Bulevardi, I am regretting flushing that away. But never mind, there are many more where she came from--here is one now, selling me a new cell-phone. Naturally I buy the most expensive one, the one with video and a little tiny camera. Perhaps I will take pictures for you now of my visit to Finland. It might be interesting for you to see all the people i have described here for yourselfs. What do you think? One strange thing, though--my company credit card is not working when I go to pay for it. Naturally, I could phone New York to find out the problem, but no one will be there today. It is Saturday morning. And the telephone with all my business contact numbers is lying smashed in a dustbin somewhere at Kennedy airport anyway. Oh well, that is is what American Express is for. I will straighten this out on Monday. For now I am on vacation.

But I am a bit worried. I have four people working for me at the Likkanen loft in New York. First there is Jesper Pedersen. He is Danish, clever with computers, gifted musician, very good with money. He is my Business Manager, but I know he is impatient to start his own business. He is also bonking his assistant Camilla Sjoblom, who is in charge of Marketing, which is a bit uncomfortable for me, because before I hired her, it was me who was making the hot squishy monkeys with her. But they are a happy, stable couple now, and part of Manhattan's burgeoning 'polyamorous community.' So they have a young blonde woman from Kentucky living with them now as a 'Gorean slave'. 'Gor' is apparently some kind of imaginary science-fiction planet, popular with submissive woman, who tattoo the word on their arms as an advertisement. Later, when they have kids, this girl will also function as an au pair, Jesper tells me, which will be a tax write-off; he is very efficiency-minded. Then there is Johan Fremin, who is perhaps the greatest pure designer in the world. He is Swedish, a bit of a legend online because of his amazing talent, and a very close personal friend. Unfortunately, I have many issues with him lately, because a few years ago he went down to the Amazon on a 'mystic drug-lodge tour,' and he never came back. While under the influence of some Indian shaman's drug, he became convinced that he had been contacted by an extra-terrestrial mechanical intelligence in orbit around the earth, which he referred to as a 'VALIS' (I was later told that this is from a novel by Philip K. Dick, but whatever, Johan was very serious about this. In fact, he sent me a transcript). So far I cannot lure him back yet, though I have offered him more and more money to return. Occasionally I see some Peruvian tourist guide website he has designed from his mud hut, which seems like a terrible waste to me for the best designer on the planet. But he says (via the occasional voicemail) that the alien intelligence doesn't want him to return to North America. Consequently, I am now heavily relying on Magnus Hagerman, also Swedish and a brilliant designer, but much more of a traditional graphic artist. Under his influence, the Likkanen designs are taking a bolder, more Giger-like organic look; it was his idea to branch out into ceramic toilets that actually look like bowels. But in his personal life, he is rather normal, which means he actually comes to work sometimes. And in design, that is often what matters most, as you can tell by looking at any modern office building.

I have my troubles. This is what happens when you stop being an artist only and also have to function as a businessman. I would like to live in a mud hut, too, but I have my responsibilities. Of course I will not have them for much longer, because I will soon be dead, LOL.

As I take a long walk through the city centre, I am thinking about my horrible recurring dream. How glad I am I never bonked Aino. At least I will not have to be chopping the poor thing up, too. And no sexy airline stewardess, either! Now every pretty woman I see on the street I think to myself how grateful I am that I will not have her in that cavern with me tonight hanging from a butcher's hook. I bet that is not what they are guessing is going on in my head, ROFL! Or perhaps it is if they are 'Gorean', I don't know. And then it occurs to me how strange it is that although it was Likki I was dissecting last night, it was Stina I have been thinking about. Of course, that night in 1971 was also the first time i ever set eyes on Kylikki as well, so i suppose it makes some sort of sense. I suppose that if I really want to understand why things never worked out between me and Stina, I really should slaughter and eat her first. Perhaps the symbolism of the digestive act will yield me this knowledge. Perhaps this is actually the whole point of the dream. But I still wish I had brought along a cigarette lighter and a few sacks of charcoal, at least. And that is when I decide never to fall asleep again. Maybe if I can keep drinking coffee and viina in this eternal daylight, I can avoid it altogether. What is the longest a human can go without sleep? I must Google that. A week, perhaps? After a certain amount of time, I know it is fatal. But perhaps it is only under the deepest REMming that I would have this dream--if I could just doze lightly, or REM while I am awake, then maybe the dream will go away. As if. But hey, it's worth a try! And anyhoo, as I have said, I am on vacation. I can drink and watch TV all I like. Why else would one fly off to a foreign country?

So I go back to my hotel room to pack, and then I notice a very strange thing. Several of my possessions are not quite as I left them, and one of my cases seems to have been rummaged through. Nothing is missing that i can tell, however. Still, this is very disturbing. Has the maid been in? No, the room has not been tidied, and the towels have not been replaced. Perhaps the hotel has a thief, like in an old Hollywood film--if so, however, he has no interest in my iBook. Except to go through its folders, I see, when I open it. Why would anyone want to do that? Has a competitor hired an industrial spy to sabotage my business? Of all the many strange things that have happened to me since leaving New York, this is the strangest. For an instant a crazy idea passes through my mind--did the Strawberry somehow get back in and go through all my things while I was gone out of female curiosity? And as if summoned by that very thought, there is suddenly a shy tapping on my door. It is the Strawberry. She is so excited and happy that she is almost dancing up and down like a little girl. Standing behind her is Riita Koivistu, who is also smiling.

'Look! Look!' says the Strawberry, pushing them under my nose. 'Riita found me two tickets for the concert tomorrow! She's a magician! You'll come with me, won't you?' Oh God, why do you hate me so? At the thought of spending a whole evening watching the Cricket prancing and screeching about the stage, I totally lose my temper. I admit I am not proud of it, but this is the dark side of Likkanen. If you like him in times of laughter, then you must also like him in the time of tears.

'Of course I won't go with you!' I snap. 'How can you possibly imagine I might enjoy that? Please, just leave me alone!'

She looks stricken, then turns beet-red and bows her head. Behind her in the sunlit hall, Riita is shocked and angry, as if she wants to hit me. 'I thought we were friends,' whispers the Strawberry.

'Well, we aren't! There is no such thing as friendship between a man and a woman, anyhoo, you stupid girl. It is always based on an attraction--everyone just lies about it.' I swallow hard. 'Look, I am too old and useless for you. Just find some nice young man and give him this ticket, OK? Go away!' And I slam the door.

Now I am going to have to change hotels very quickly. Even I cannot stay in a place after a tantrum like that. So off I go again out to find a free hotel room. Any hotel room. I don't even care how many stars it has; I am suddenly willing to give up any luxury. Except of course, viina and coffee. I discover I am trembling and shaking all over with anger. And perhaps some other emotion, though I cannot put a name to it. Perhaps for you it is sad to see the last of the Strawberry, but not for me. Finally Likkanen is free of her! I stop at a cafe on Mannerheimintie as I walk north toward Toolonlahti, and drink a glass or two of viina, then order a coffee. It is then, through the front window, that I notice that the Gollum-like fellow who followed us around Esplanadi yesterday is back. Now he is hanging about in the street behind me like a 'puukki' or traditional Finnish elf in his blue beret, pretending to stare in a perfume shopfront while he waits for me to come out of the cafe bar. He is obviously following me still. But why? As I wonder about this, I am suddenly filled with the certain knowledge that it is he who has been in my hotel room and gone through my laptop. And this makes me very angry again. So angry that I feel the urge to rush outside and strangle him with my bare hands. But by the time I rush outside, he has vanished. Perhaps he really is a tomte or a puukki, I think to myself. Or worse! Perhaps he is just a figment of my imagination! I have read of such hallucinations happening to the sleep-deprived--perhaps this is merely the first symptom. It is while I am looking in the front window of the Parfumerie that I suddenly remember the Strawberry's soapy smell. Should I go in and buy her an expensive scent for a 'peace offering'? I shake my head to clear it, and begin to walk off again to search for another hotel. There will be plenty of rooms near the bus station.

Long before I worked for Givenchy, I already understood the importance of smells to a woman. When a woman chooses a scent she is not trying to smell good. No. no, she is behaving as an animal does in nature, she is advertising herself. But the mistake we men make is in thinking that all women are alike, like a single separate species. When we advertise ourselfs as men, we beat our chests and howl our lyrics of love to the world like orangutangs in the jungle. We are trying to attract the attention of all women. But women do not think this way at all, take it from Likkanen; they correctly see that we men are as different and distinctive as all the types of songbirds in a Finnish forest. When they select a smell, it is to send their pheremones out floating in the air to appeal to a Spotted Woodpecker, perhaps, or a Marsh Warbler, a great Crested Grebe, or even a Coot. See that aging shop assistant lady in the chiffon dress? She is wearing enough Chanel #5 to take a bath in. But with it she is saying, 'I want to meet a nice rich elderly man who smokes too many cigars to have any sense of smell at all.' See the young Goth girl with the red eyeliner and the tattered black stockings? She is wearing a shy blend of mousse spray and mothballs; with it she is saying, 'I want to meet a nice teenage boy who will take me to the Lordi concert next weekend.' The American tourist girl in the batik skirt soaked in patchouli? 'I want to meet a nice pimp!' LOL! Oh yes, there is a language of the nose. Stina taught me that. A man must read all the right signals and then make the correct ones back if he wants to make the hot squishy gland-slapping monkey sex with them. Because women do not like it so well if you are the wrong species. Oh no, not at all. That is the problem with the Strawberry and me, of course--she has mistaken me for one species of human being when I am really quite another.

Stina never made such mistakes. Though often I wonder, if perhaps I was not her only one. Because really, she was far too driven and ambitious to ever have a boyfriend at all for very long. And yet, she really had quite a soft spot for me, one might almost say a real weakness. Why else would she waste a whole year of her life with me, which was such a huge interruption in her studies? I don't mean her school studies, because she cared nothing for those, or even her acting--I mean, of course, her single-minded study of men. She was rather like a zoologist in this, or perhaps an anthropologist. Of course I had no idea of this when I asked her to be my 'girlfriend'. I didn't realize I was actually volunteering to be a test subject in clinical scientific trials, like for a drug company. But I suppose this is how all young people learn with each other. Those who learn at all.

I will give you an example of what I am talking about. Just like in the film 'Sunset Boulevard', an actress, even a young one just beginning, needs a chauffeur. So today, only a week or two since that night in the Torni, I have been wheedled by her to borrow my father's old Volvo and drive Stina out to the old Espoo CityTheatre for an audition. The director of this play, which is called 'He Who Gets His Face Slapped' (I think), is an old Swedish coot I have never heard of, but who Stina says is a little bit famous in Stockholm. Stockholm is her New York City, you see. So I have arrived early, just like Erich von Stroheim, to hang about, to rehearse her in her lines and watch her while she puts on make-up and selects her perfume. Already her parents have given up disapproving of me; now mostly they just accept my presence with typical Finnish courtesy and, I detect, a slight sense of relief. This is not entirely a good thing, because it means we must all sauna nude together, and Stina's mother is quite a bit fat in the hips. So I don't know where to look sometimes.

'This is not a film audition,' Stina is saying. 'So at my age, my body doesn't matter so much--what's important is my face. It has to stand out from all the others in the director's mind. In addition, this is a theatre; it is always very hot and smelly on a stage, so I have to make sure he remembers my smell as well.' For this reason she has been drinking Verbena tea all day. She has read that this will engorge the tissues of the vagina and make them very fragrant. So she has not washed down there either in two days, or bathed at all today. 'There is even a name for this in Paris,' she tells me. 'That's where I was really born, you know, not Solvi. The French believe that every woman has a unique body odour called a "cassoulet". With it she can enslave any man she wants.' She is sitting at her dresser in front of a collection of scent bottles, which are arranged in rows like toy soldiers. She selects one with a red cap and swabs her red pubic hair gently with it. 'He's an old guy, not a young one, and I've read that he smokes. So there's no point in being too subtle. And the other girls will back off from me, as well, if I stink.' She giggles, glancing at me slyly from under her veined eyelids. 'That's good, because then I will stand apart from the rest. But my breath has to be perfect. Let's just pray he doesn't like boys.' In the corner a little plastic radio beneath a cross on the wall is playing softly, 'While My Guitar Gently Weeps'. She is brewing pure witchcraft--but naturally, it is all according to the strictest scientific principles.

She applies these same principles to her acting, as well. She has read a book that says all emotion in acting is in fact sexually expressed, so she interprets this to mean that her facial expressions must mimic sexual acts. So when we rehearse her lines, which call for her first to be angry, and then to cry, she first pretends to choke while performing oral sex in order to convey anger, then imitates a long and profound orgasm to illustrate grief. I feel a surge of jealousy at this sight, since she has only just achieved her first one with me quite recently, and naturally I am not in a terrific hurry to share it with the world. But that is the life of an actress, I suppose.

Next time: The Magus.

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Don Juan in Helsinki: 14

In the excitement, we have all forgotten about Aino and her heartbreak. Even now, it is possible that all could have turned out well, or OK anyway, but here comes another delay, along with an important lesson about servants. Sometimes they are the real masters. Aino, you see, wants to go home now. She is cold, she is miserable, she has humiliated herself in front of her whole school, been dumped, even been harrassed at a petrol station. She has had a bad night. But Taneli, a grumpy bear of a man, is too stubborn. He wants to fish the Volvo out of its snowdrift, attach it to the steel ball at the rear end of the Mercedes by a chain, and tow it back with us so that he can repair it himself tomorrow (I say 'tomorrow' because there is no 'in the morning' in winter; this is a meaningful difference in Finland, where time itself is fluid and consensual for half the year). So, he has his way. We drive back to where the Volvo is parked and I help him attach the two cars, and then at last we set off for Kauniainen. It is perhaps 23:00, or 11 pm at night, as it would be called in America, and traffic is light.

We travel slowly; when Taneli brakes too hard, the darkened Volvo crashes into us from behind. Aino and I have exchanged places, and now I am sitting in the front with the driver, and she sits in the back with her friends. A loud yellow fire engine goes screaming by us toward the city, its sirens all flashing. By the time we are near Espoo, we are almost the only the vehicle on the road, except for the snow-ploughing trucks. Then suddenly, more disaster. A pair of headlights appears in the mirror like two tiny eyes. A car is far behind us but overtaking us very fast.

Now, in Finland back in those times there were not so many different kinds of automobiles on the road, mostly Volvos, Saabs, VWs, and Opels, and for the rich and important, Mercedes. All of them had very distinctive headlights. But the ones behind us at that moment were even more so. I turned for a better look, and recognized them at once--they belonged to the bright red Jaguar XKE E-Type that Vaino's father had given him as a present for his 16th birthday. This was a very expensive British car, and had its steering column on the right, or should I say, the wrong side, which was legal in those days. The Turuntie road has four lanes, but only the middle two were cleared, so that when Vaino roared past us, his radio playing very loud, the convertible top down and his long hair blowing and whipping in the cold wind, it was on the wrong side of the road, and he was therefore sitting close enough to us to recognize Aino's family cars as he went by. So he suddenly comes to an almost dead stop, and as we catch up to him, he matches his speed to ours. Now he is staring inside our windows and catches sight of Aino. Beside him, we all see, is Heli, wrapped up in his sheepskin coat, laughing and drinking from a bottle of viina. I could not see Aino's face from where I sat, but Vaino could. First he smiled at her. Then he laughed. Then he stuck out his tongue and began to waggle it around in his mouth. 'Tolla kaverilla virtaa kusi väärään suuntaan,' muttered Taneli ('That guy's piss is flowing back to his head'), and slowed the car abruptly. Now Vaino's red Jag shot forward of us, and as it did so, Vaino began to spit at Aino, like a nasty child. Huge gobs of spittle came flying back at us through the air, some of them landing on the windshield and flecking the side window next to Aino. Another fire truck's lights showed ahead, so Vaino cut us off, then drove away in a spray of snow and highway rock salt. The second fire engine zoomed by. 'Ei vittu Saatana,' Taneli said, turning on the windscreen wipers. None of the rest of us say another word all the rest of the way to Aino's house.

The next day, the police will come to Vaino's house and arrest him for trying to start a fire at a university building. But his father is too important for him to be held for long, and Heli will swear she was with him all that night, and that they never went near the university. This is the first, but certainly not the last time Vaino will be arrested, but almost never for the right crime at the right time. At least not tonight, anyway.

I had never been to the Von Rosen estate in Kauniainen before, but for years I had heard many kids at school talking of it. It featured an old stone manor house, which looks a bit like the Von Julin's Fiskars mansion in Uusimaa, only smaller, but is most famous for the 'Statue Garden' behind it. Kauniainen is a little city completely inside the much larger one of Espoo, which is full of wealthy Finland-Swedes who have retreated to live inside there a bit like Boers inside a 'kraal'. The Von Rosen houses (there are four of them ringed around this garden) are on the boundary of these two incorporated cities near Highway 18. But we are not to stay in the 'big house' tonight. We are met at the front door of one of the modern adjoining villas, which are a bit like modern Swiss ski chalets, by the Vietnamese housekeeper, and led inside. Then she disappears back to the last half hour of some TV programme (in those days the two Finnish channels only are on the air until midnight). The servants, all them refugees from Vietnam except for Taneli, have their own separate lodge. In ours there is a huge Christmas tree decorated with gingerbread and white lights; beside it, a fire is going in the big fireplace, and a smorgasbord meal is waiting for us on a sideboard on hot-plates. I discover I am suddenly very hungry. Even Aino eats with us. Matti, giggling, mixes us Marskin ryyppys, so that during the meal, we all get just a little drunk. Now we are acting like grownups in a film and even trying to make jokes in English. It feels very sophisticated and romantic to me, and I am hoping the night never ends. To myself I think, 'Likkanen, this is what money is really for.'

But even though I have always thought of my parents as wealthy, I soon discover I have learned nothing about luxury yet. After we are done eating, Stina starts nagging at Aino, 'Let me heat up the pool so we can have a midnight swim!' Beside the glass sliding doors of the sauna, at the corner between the old house and the modern one, is a heated pool surrounded by a low stone wall. We switch to viina while we wait for the water to warm up. After we have been drinking for another hour or so in front of the fire, we all take our clothes off and jump in, screaming and splashing around.

It has begun to snow again, very heavily. All around us is a quiet rustling of fat white flakes. By now we are all very drunk. We float together on our backs at the shallow end sipping from the bottle, our heads resting against the sides so that we are gazing up at the snow, which spills down as if from a huge salt-cellar. As they hit the fog of mist and steam from the warm water, the flakes melt; occasionally one reaches our faces to stab at them like a tiny prick of ice. Now the girls are trying to cheer up Aino with talk of boys. They mention the names of all the cute ones at school who Aino could have now, but laughing, she finds reasons why each one is wrong for her. 'What's wrong with Lemo?' says Matti cheekily. 'You could have him. He's lovely--and just look at him. He is gagging for it!' That is me--'Lemminkainen' means 'lover-boy' in Finnish, and like all of Vaino's nicknames, it has stuck. She and Stina begin stroking me, which fills me with a strange feeling, of excitement and aversion at the same time. They are treating me like a pagan sacrifice to cheer up Aino. But Aino is not interested. Suddenly she starts to cry.

'I feel sick', she says.

'Come on, pikku kultaseni,' Matti says to her. 'Let's put you to bed. You've had a terrible day.' They clamber out of the pool and disappear inside. Stina and i are alone now, and she moves a little way from me. I am trying not to stare at her. Too much.

'I hope she isn't having withdrawal,' says Stina. 'Matti and I have been worrying about her.'

'Withdrawal? You mean from Vaino?'

'From drugs. Vaino made her take a lot of drugs with him.' This is nonsense, of course. Vaino is famous for his wild habits, but he isn't a heroin addict. Aino isn't going to go into 'withdrawal' from not taking LSD. At least not from what I have read. I am actually too much of coward to take any drugs--plus my parents give me very little pocket money to do it with. So, I decide to change the subject. There is a statue of a very heavy-legged, flat-breasted woman, or at least what I think must be a woman, half-covered in snow crouching on a square column where the two walls of the pool meet. Beyond this, I assume, is the famous garden.

'Are all the statues as hideous as that one?' I ask.

Stina rises out of the water like Aphrodite. 'Come on', she says, her voice low and excited, 'Let's go look for ourselves!' And she takes my hand. We run naked down the stone steps, our bodies wrapped in an envelope of mist, down a path filled with dark, looming human shapes.

The sculptures were all created by Aino's crazy grandmother Ingeborg von Rosen, who worked in Oslo for the famous sculptor Gustav Vigeland as a plaster-caster. That is where she met Aino's grandfather, who was a relative by marriage to the Nazi Hermann Goering. The garden she created to house them is a sort of maze of wandering paths surrounded by walls of different heights. In their intersections are concrete benches and empty, frozen goldfish pools. Nothing is straight; everything, including the sculptures themselves, was created by the 'poured-concrete' method, which means they are now badly deteriorated. They were not much to begin with, in my opinion: muscular semi-naked heroic Aryan figures so poorly rendered that they seem almost deformed, twisted faces leering and gazing upward. Now they have cracks in them, bits of dark moss, whole chunks missing. At the end of her years, all she could manage to make was these faces, it seems--hundreds of contorted masks are stuck to the grey walls or to the arches above the paths. In summer perhaps, filled with flowers and goldfish, this must be a very pretty place; there are pots and urns and pools for them everywhere. But here in the darkness of winter covered in deepening white snow, it is as if the evil witch Louhi has attacked Eden with her winter magic, flash-freezing all the naked Nephilim as they try to escape her fury. White and naked, Stina dances among them, striking poses like a ballerina. I see all of this in the space of a few long minutes, perhaps four or five--then the cold begins to intrude, and suddenly scared by it, Stina huddles against me. In Finnish myth, this is called 'Pohjola', the terrible instant coldness the witch creates, the inspiration, as the Strawberry has correctly said, for that stupid Narnia film.

Ah, poor silly Strawberry, how could you ever compete with my memories of this night? How could your great big awkward American body ever be so pale, so divinely shaped, so young as Stina's? It was the goddess Mnemosyne Paris might have handed the golden apple to, if only he'd been a bit older and wiser. Like me these days.

Groaning and shivering, teeth chattering and clicking, Stina and I barely stumble inside in time. We wrap ourselves up in a rug in front of the fire and drink more viina, holding each other very close beside the sparkling Joulu tree. It is then we begin to snog. Time passes, as in a dream. Then Matti comes back and turns off the pool heater, wearing a bathrobe; at the side of us, she takes it off and clambers inside the rug too, on my other side. So now I am taking turns snogging both girls. Was here ever a boy so lucky? If Stina is bothered by Matti's arrival, she shows no sign of it, and I feel, yes, it is crazy, the tiniest stab of hurt at that. 'I've put her to bed,' Matti is saying. 'I had to give her one of her mother's sleeping pills. I should go back soon and check on her.' She yawns, and it is contagious. We all start doing it. Suddenly all the odd, tiring events of the long night come crowding back into my memory all at once, like a kinescope projection, and I feel utterly exhausted. My body tingles as if I am about to step outside of it.

'It's bedtime,' says Stina.

'OK,' I say, understandably disappointed. I assume I am to sleep here tonight in front of the dying fire on the long, low leather couch, so I get up to look for my clothes.

'Where do you think you're going?' says Matti.

'Yes,' says Stina, her blue eyes glittering, 'You can't just leave us unsatisfied like this. You're coming, too.' Finnish women, it says in Strawberry's guidebook, are famous for their decisiveness.

So that is how the three of us ended upstairs in the big bedroom bonking for the rest of the night. Of course there is no hot lesbo action in this threesome, aside from the two girls snogging each other sometimes to get me excited again and then laughing and rolling their eyes. But who cares? It is a threesome! And I am studly enough for both of them! And although it is true, as I have said before, that in every threesome there is always one who is not the most desired, well, tonight it is perhaps not so cruelly obvious as it might be that it is Stina and i who are the hot ones and Matleena who is not. Poor Matti. With her big heart and her merry laugh, she might have been the perfect woman for me if only she had been a little thinner, a little prettier, a little smarter. But of course, then she would not have been Matti. Sometime much much later in the 'morning', perhaps six or seven o'clock, I remember looking at my little watch dials glowing green, and thinking, this is the best my life will ever be. I will never ever again enjoy a moment this sweet. And you know what? I was right. Perhaps Louhi cursed me after all. In the myths, she sends her beautiful daughters into the world to do just this. And then follows death.

Only tonight, death didn't come for me. Suddenly we were woken by a loud screaming and then a crash downstairs. 'Oh my God!' says Matti, sitting straight up in the bed. 'I totally forgot!.' She is still half-asleep. She rushes downstairs at once without bothering to put her robe on. I wrap myself in the yellow blanket and follow her.

Crouched in the sauna, beside the glass doors, is the Vietnamese housekeeper. She is staring up at the ceiling, her hands to each side of her head, rocking back and forth on her heels, moaning and howling loudly in Vietnamese. Her face looks just like one of Ingeborg von Rosen's concrete masks. The clocks say it is morning, but of course, it is still pitch-black outside,and all the lights illuminating the pool have been switched on. From where I am standing, the surface of the water appears white, but there is something dark inside it. Matti begins to tremble and cry; she fumbles with the door handle but cannot budge it. It is chilly in the sauna, and she is covered in goose-bumps. I find my purple bell-bottomed trousers and slip them on, along with my boots, then, still wrapped in the blanket I open the other door and go outside. It is very, very cold. My breath seems to freeze in the air in front of me.

It is one of those situations in life when you know exactly what you are about to find, yet even when you do, it is still a terrible surprise. I follow the sliding footprints of the housekeeper out into the snow that rings the pool. The water has retained much of its heat; only a thin skin of ice and snow cover its surface. Down at the shallow end a dark lump lies suspended just below it, like a big black-currant floating in a glaze of sugared white marzipan. My boots crunch in the snow. I come closer, lean down to look. it is not a big black-currant, it is Aino. Groaning, I wade into the pool, the film of ice cracking and shattering beneath my boot-heel. The shock of the cold water takes my breath away. Aino is lying on her face with only the very back of her head above the ice; she is naked, her skin is whitish-blue and her long, fine hair is spread around her like seaweed. A bottle of viina and an empty pill bottle are frozen nearby. Few people who take an overdose of sleeping pills actually die from it; Aino has been very practical and arranged to drown herself as well. A long trail of white vomit curls out of her mouth, twisting and curling in the water beneath her. My entry into the pool disturbs it, the water surges and rocks, the ice creaks and splinters around me. I am in this frigid water up to my armpits; I reach out and grab Aino's arm and pull her to the side. Shivering uncontrollably, I check her vital signs. She is very dead. There is no rigor, of course, but her limbs are stiff and heavy; she must have come out here and done this while we were upstairs bonking. For an instant I wonder if she heard us. For some reason this idea upsets me very much. Then I rush back inside the sauna.

Matti is at the door. 'I totally forgot to check on her,' she is saying over and over, 'It's all my fault! It's all my fault!' Then 'You aren't going to just leave her there!'

'Matti, she is dead,' I say, between my clicking teeth. The housekeeper has not moved and is still wailing.

'She can't be! You don't know that!'

'I do know it. Matti, I'm in medical school. I can tell when someone is dead. Aino is dead, and I have to leave her where she is for the police.' This is nonsense of course, I have never seen a cadaver before. Well, before this one, that is. I have taken off my wet clothes and wrapped myself up in the rug again. 'Turn on the sauna, will you, before I die, too!'

'What's going on?' This is Stina. She has come downstairs, fully dressed, and seems very unruffled, even elegant. She has taken the time to carefully remove any trace of herself from the big bedroom and put her coat and bag in the small one across the all from it. She has even put on her make-up. This cold-blooded practicality of hers should have been a warning to me for future; later, when I will ask her about her behaviour that morning, she will reply very impatiently 'It's easy for you, you're a boy. And Matti's mother doesn't care what she does, which is why she does it. But I knew we would all be in the newspapers, and my parents are Lutheran and very conservative. It's hard enough for me to get permission to take drama classes at all. Besides,' she will give a little shrug. 'What good could I have done?'

But at the time she coolly went to the phone and called the emergency number, speaking very clearly into the receiver in her 'actress' voice. So then followed the usual dreary routine after a tragedy; the sirens, the long, miserable slow parade of police and ambulance attendants and medics smoking and standing around tracking snow and mud through the house, a coroner, a police sergeant who takes statements from each of us and from the servants. Aino's parents are found in Stockholm; they charter a private plane back from Uppsala Airport, they will be here in a few hours. I am hoping I will not have to face them. In the end, my father drives out to Kauniainen to pick me up in his battered old Volvo, looking very grey and grim. He and the coroner know each other from the old days, and the sergeant treats him with reverence, so at last I am free to go.

On the way back to town, my father smokes his pipe, removing it to say only, 'What a shame.' Somehow, I am made to feel I have let him down. Again.

And then the next day we were all over the newspapers. Things were far tamer in those days, and the Rosens were wealthy and respected, so nothing too sensational was said in them. Mostly there was just local gossip. And of course, none of this did any harm to my 'lover-boy' reputation. So it was true, it is easy for boys. I remember once when I was in middle school, I was caught by my teacher kissing with one of the girls. She sent a note of complaint to my mother, who wrote her back, 'Please notify me if you catch him kissing the boys!' Stina was right, of course. She usually was. But still I couldn't help wondering much later--was the make-up for the newspaper cameras? Somehow she even managed to mention to the reporters that she was an 'aspiring stage actress.'

I waited nearly a week before I telephoned her. I wasn't sure of the etiquette for dating a girl one had met in a sex 'threesome'. Would she even take me seriously? Or had I ruined everything possible between us already by bonking another girl in front of her? I had no experience in these subtle social matters, although once I had known an older girl who would bonk with me drunk at parties but wouldn't even speak to me at school. Would Stina treat me in this way? And did I really want another relationship with a girl who would bonk anybody when I wasn't around, like Heli? Was what had happened with Stina unusual for her, a kinky new bit of fun she had been swept away by the excitement of the evening? Or was she like a ginger-haired alley-cat on heat? All these thoughts were in my mind all week while I tried to go about my classes during the day and my studies at night; finally I could stand it no longer and dialled her number. I thought, this is stupid, her mother will answer, she won't be home. But Stina picked up the receiver almost immediately. Later i learned that she answered every telephone call in her house since she was three, and her parents had long since given up even trying to.

And that is how we came to have our first date at a 'real' restaurant at the top of the Hotel Torni tower. It was the first time I had ever gone there, and I wore a tie. There were Joulu decorations everwhere, red flowers on the table and candles that flickered and glinted in Stina's blue eyes. Our table was at the window; below us spread the whole city, lights glowing yellow and green in the wintry dark with flashes of bright white and red where there were lines of traffic. What did we eat? Smoked ham and “rosolli”, served with boiled potatoes and roe fish, and I remember we drank a Rose d'Anjou. I would never touch it now, of course, but teenagers always think it is a good wine. She was wearing her best dress, which was a dark, rich blue cut low across her top and very tight around the waist, and all the waiters stared and made excuses to hang about her. What did we talk about? I can't remember. But I do remember this: over dessert, which was gingerbread and a sweet plum and sour cream pie, I suddenly said to her, 'I don't just want sex--I want you to be my girlfriend.' I used the rather formal term 'rakas', which also means 'beloved.'

She looked up and gave me a very frank, calculating stare of appraisal. 'All right,' she said, and then sipped her wine. Suddenly I felt on fire with happiness. And this is how the Strawberry and her Finnish friend had happened to find me in the Atelier bar of the Hotel Torni, 35 years later but only a metre or so away from where I had sat on that night, sipping a Marskin Ryppy.

I am checking my e-mail right now. For the past few weeks I have been emailing Stina Ekblad at her addresses in Odense and Stockholm, as well as the one on her personal website. I would like very much to see her again before I die, just for a bit of a chat. Just for the sake of old times, you understand. But nothing. No answer from her at all. What does this mean? Why would she avoid me?

Next time: The scents of a woman.

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Don Juan in Helsinki: 13

OK, this is Donho Likkanen back again. Where was I? Oh yes, stuffed inside a blue Volvo 164 on a snowy highway on the way out to Kauniainen (Grankula) on a Friday night in 1971. It is Aino's car, or more likely, her father's, since Finnish teenagers rarely owned cars in those days. This is not America, oh no. Not yet, anyway. Even the snow is not a big deal to us Finns; we regard it in the same way Americans think of rain, as just an annoyance. The car has chains on the tyres, a second row of very bright headlamps on the bumpers, and even little heaters built into the seats. But Aino is too upset to drive, so Matti has taken the wheel; Stina and I are in the back seat. She and I are not touching--she is leaning forward, trying to say comforting things to Aino, or at least to distract her. To me, with no sisters, and with only loud, cruel, self-centred Heli as an example for a real girlfriend, all this dramatic talk and naked emotion is very strange; Bjorni and I would only discuss such a matter with a grunt or two and then go out and either get drunk or play hockey. Or most likely, both. I am also uncomfortable around Stina. She has begun the evening by putting my hand to her breast; now she is not ignoring me exactly--indeed, she often will brush my arm or hand with hers when talking (a whole chapter is devoted to this technique in one of her books, it turns out)--but she is giving her attention elsewhere.

Our first signal that something is wrong is a turn signal; first one side refuses to stop blinking, then the other. Next all the lights in the car begin to blink and boink--and then they all short out, along with the engine. Aino is under some dreadful evil enchantment, and everywhere she goes tonight electrical equipment refuses to work. Matti steers the Volvo into a drift on the shoulder, and we come to a halt. Matti tries to restart the ignition a half dozen times, flooding the engine, and then gets no charge from the battery at all. 'Perkele!' she yells. We are marooned in the arctic. There is not much traffic out tonight, only a few long-distance trucks that do not stop for us. We are taught in school to wait for a police car in such situations, but tonight we could freeze to death doing that. The cell phone has not yet been invented. But there is a yellow glow around the curve of the road only 100 or so metres away, and we decide to get out and walk. We are in luck--it is a Shell petrol station; by the time we arrive there, we are frosted over with snow and look like four Michelin men.

Now, here is another difference from America; inside most Finnish stations at that time were bars, 'Shellin baari', they were called. Nowadays, of course they have mostly been converted to convenience stores, but then they sold spirits and beers like Lapin Kulta, Karhu, and Koff and snacks like 'lihapiirakka', a sort of hot dog. This place also had a few slot-machines and, of course, a jukebox on which is playing 'Whole Lotta Love'. The station manager is behind the birchwood bar counter in front of a red flurorescent Koff sign, and there are a few lit yellow paper stars and a straw billy-goat for Joulu decorations. He tells us there is no mechanic on duty tonight to drive a tow-truck. But there is a pay-phone, and Aino uses it to call her parents' house. The Rosens, like the Molens, have servants, which is not completely strange to me; my own mother has a daily maid, my parents retain a handyman, and there is even a doorman and a concierge at our apartment building. But the Rosens have a chauffeur! Aino awakens him, and he tells her he will be along to fetch us in the Mercedes as quickly as he can. While she is doing this, I have a look around. There are a few truck drivers drinking coffee on stools, and a pair of 'huligaanit' drinking viina at a table. As soon as I catch sight of them, I know there will be trouble. Just my luck! Well, it is natural, even the truck drivers, who likely have wives and kids waiting for them at home, are unsettled by the sudden appearance of three pretty rich little schoolgirls and mutter appreciative obscenities. But it is the two at the table who are the problem. Even after three and a half decades, I find I can remember their faces quite clearly (even though, strangely, I have trouble recalling that of my own father), and I bet I barely half to describe them for you to remember them, too, because you have all probably seen them before in a bar somewhere. The 'leader' is thirty or so but looks older because of a funny scar that cuts into his eyebrow. He fancies himself a great ladies' man and wears his blonde hair greased back in a ducktail. He has sideburns like Stephen Stills, the Woodstock musician, and too-tight black leather pants. His 'sidekick' is big and has a lump of gristle for a nose and bad, rodent-like teeth; you remember him from the schoolyard playground, where he was always the arm-twisting bully. Both of them have been in and out of the army, where they were lazy and stole things, and in and out of jail, which is why they aren't policemen. And tonight they are drunk.

At first, everything is OK. I buy a beer for myself and Matti, and Jaffa orange soda for Stina and Aino. Then the blonde guy with the scar starts saying things to the girls. His friend laughs. They both become more aggressive. Matti replies to them defensively, I don't remember what she says, but Stina tries the 'tough-girl' approach, saying something like, 'Shut up, will you?' Naturally this makes them laugh harder, but a bit angrily. Now, again you must realize, this is not America. These two guys have no guns, they are not going to kidnap and rape the girls, and although the closed-circuit security camera has not yet come to Europe, there are a few witnesses here who will talk to the police if anything happens. No, it is not really the girls who are in danger, though they might get pawed over a bit; it is me. The odds are getting higher every minute I will take some kind of beating before we are rescued. The only way I can escape this is to disappear outside after giving some sort of excuse, like saying I am trying to hail a cab or look for a police car or something. For an instant I am tempted to do this. But I decide to stay and play the hero, though likely it will hurt. After all, three soft female pairs of eyes are watching me, and all are silently begging me to stay. And I'm still too young and foolish to be a true coward yet. So, when one of the guys approaches and starts to play with Aino's hair, I stand up suddenly, my hand still on my beer bottle and say, 'Enough!'

'Or what, homo?' says the big guy. 'Homo' is the universal Finnish derogatory term for a gay blade.

Suddenly I find I do not have an answer for this. I haven't really thought it through very properly. While I am reflecting, the manager comes from behind the bar and tells them to go home. My sense of relief is so great that I almost piss myself, but I strain very hard not to let any of this show on my face. I cannot bear it if those three pretty girls should realize that I am actually secretly scared of dying in their defence. I would rather die! Besides, it isn't over. I could still die! The two tough guys are pushing and shoving, just a little bit, calling us both things like 'perseennuolija', which I'm sure you can guess the meaning of, along with other insults. The manager grabs the foxy-faced blonde fellow's shoulder, and one of the truckers at the bar clears his throat very loudly. So finally then it's over, but just for now. The two stomp outside, the big guy yelling, 'Olet ihan perseestä!' ('You are straight from the ass-hole') on his way. The problem now is, they will be waiting out there for us, at least until they get cold and sober up. I thank the manager, who waves me off angrily--he blames us for the trouble, and he is hoping these two don't come back after closing hours and cause much more trouble, like smashing in his glass doors or stealing something from the lot. So I buy another beer from him and return to the table to sit with the girls. Now time is passing very very slowly indeed. Where is the chauffeur, Taneli, he is called? Keeping a wary eye on the door, we play tunes on the jukebox, though there is not much to chose from, mostly Finnish oldies like Matti Esko's 'Helsinki Valssi' or Irwin Goodman's 'Ei Tippa Tappa'. Or of course, Led Zeppelin, who have played in Helsinki the year before. While Stina and I pore over these, the other two girls try to phone Aino's home again, but there is no news of Taneli. Where is he?

And where is Vaino, you are saying? We are only reading this story because you say it is about Vaino's great cruelty--we don't see any more of that yet. OK, OK, he will be along in a bit, just be patient. But first we need Taneli, the Rosens' chauffeur, here. An hour has passed, maybe even two, when Aino decides she sees the yellow headlamps of the Mercedes passing by on the road outside. 'He's missed the turn!' she says, and rushes out the door and into the night to try to wave him down. So, of course the rest of us follow her outside--what else can we do? The snow has stopped, and there is no sign of the two bad guys. There is no sign of any Mercedes either. We turn to walk back inside, and then suddenly there they are waiting for me in an icy patch on the cement beneath one of the petrol pump canopies, a pair of dark shapes in the light of the station. There is the red glow of a cigarette inside one of them. They move to block my path, and I stop. The girls are still back behind me somewhere, beside the road, too scared to go back to the station. The blonde guy is in my face now. Meanwhile his sidekick is moving behind me.

'You've been pissing in my car,' he says. His words stink of anger, tobacco, and viina. And spittle. Some of it sprays on my face. His words surprise me so much, I am momentarily paralyzed with confusion. Even to this day, I don't quite know what he meant--perhaps it was a poetic simile meaning that i have ruined his evening. Perhaps his car was parked on the lot and he was accusing me of having scratched it or stolen petrol from it. Perhaps he was so drunk he actually even believed I had pissed on his car. Who knows?

But he leans forward and flicks his cigarette into my left eye; I see this as a tiny meteor hitting my vision, then spinning down to the pavement like a catherine wheel. At the same time, he tries to kick me in the balls, as the big guy grabs me from behind. Now, Likkanen may be young, but he is not completely stupid. When we left the baari I have secretly slipped an empty beer bottle into my coat pocket, and my left hand is holding the neck of it now. The blonde guy is wearing sharp, steel-tipped leather boots; unfortunately for him, these are leather-soled as well. He is also drunk. He slips on the ice as he kicks me, just enough to miss my crotch and kicks the bottle in my pocket instead, which splinters into three or four sharp shards. Then he falls over backwards onto his ass, cursing loudly. Meanwhile his friend is shaking me and trying to hit the back of my neck. My head is ringing and my vision is still sparking, though, as I discover later, the cigarette has missed my eye and hit the lid instead. Matti has now run over to us and bravely tugs at the bully's other arm, and he tries to hit her too. Suddenly I become very angry indeed. Without really thinking, I whip the bottle shard from my pocket and slice it deep into his fat hand. He screams. At the same moment Matti screams too. The three of us are standing there, swaying back and forth like The Three Stooges, when suddenly we are caught in a glare of yellow light, as if we have been visited by a UFO. It is the headlights of a black Mercedes sedan. It stops a few metres from us, the driver's door opens, and a middle-aged man wearing thick glasses and a Russian cap gets out. He is holding a tyre iron. At the sight of this, the second thug lets go of me, and the two of them scramble off into the night.

Later we will learn that the reason Taneli (for this is him) is holding a tyre iron is because first he had to slip the chains on before he set out, and then once he was on the 'Turuntie' driving east, some debris from a motor accident got caught up in them and punctured a tyre. So he had to change it. Then he went to the wrong Shell station. This is why he has taken so long to get here. But who cares? I am so happy to see him, I could hug him anyway. And in fact, here is the incredible thing--I am actually feeling better right this moment than I ever have before in my whole life! I even want the two bad guys to come back so I can do it all over again. Because you see, from where the girls were standing it must have looked as if I had walked straight up to the two of them quite fearlessly. So what if I really didn't see them until I was there? I am still a hero anyway. The moment we get into the car, Aino sitting beside her chauffeur in the front seat and me sandwiched between the other two girls in the back, Matti and Stina are telling me how noble I was while they wipe my eye with a packet of tissues and their own warm saliva. 'Any other guy would have run away,' says Matti. 'I'm worried about concussion,' says Stina. Heaven! I will never be so happy again as I am this moment, I think to myself. I am wrong, of course, but not very much.

Next time: The Garden of Eden.

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Don Juan in Helsinki: 12

Now you must close your eyes (I cannot or I might have another little toilet accident), and imagine that right now it is the year 1971, just before Christmas, which we call 'Joulu' or else 'Jul' if we are 'Finland-Swedes'. Karaoke has not been invented yet; instead Finns everywhere are crazy for 'Rock-nights' or 'Rokki-yö'. Every Finnish school has a band or two, so every Finnish boy thinks he is a great poet or musician, and every Finnish girl thinks she is a great singer or actress or dancer. I have already long since discovered that I am none of these. I am lucky enough to have good looks alone, so I am always being invited to audition for school plays or amateur musical productions, which is the reason I have always been part of the 'theatre crowd', but I have no talent for it. I cannot sing, I cannot read music. I am not shy, but I can play no role but that of Likkanen, because I am not naturally a good liar--I must work hard at it, like any other art.

But I am good at designing stage sets and lighting, and already I have helped to create coloured-oil and slide-projector 'light shows' for a band called 'Blues Project' and later, when they break up, for 'Tasavallan Presidentti' and 'Wigwam'. In fact, my friend who plays in them, Ronnie Osterberg, has promised to come here tonight and maybe 'jam' afterwards with Vaino's band, which is called 'Kantele'. Much as I hate Vaino, I must admit he is very, very talented; he plays two instruments very well, and with his long golden hair, he looks like a young god onstage. The lead singer for the band is Aino Rosen, who is not only pretty to look at, but has a lovely voice. Unfortunately, she is also very delicate and shy--and recently she has suffered a terrible humiliation, which I have not heard about. This will affect the evening very much, as you will see. Ronnie has heard 'Kantele' described, and is very interested to see if they are good enough to tour with; if so, his label, which is called 'Love Records', will likely sign them to a contract.

'Here' is my old high school, the SYK, which is in the Helsinki neighbourhood called Etelä-Haaga. Already it has snowed several times, and the streets and sidewalks and stairs outside are bleak and icy; it is close to midwinter, so there will only be an hour or two of 'daylight' around noon. Inside the school assembly hall, which was built in 1900 or so (and which has since been torn down and replaced with a modern auditorium, I have heard), you will feel a sudden blast of warmth and bright lights and a noisy hum of excitement as you enter it. It smells of wet wool, of burned coffee, of ammonia cleaner, rotting wood, and of course, of terva. See the serious-looking, very attractive boy with the shoulder-length very light brown hair? That is me. I am wearing brown leather Beatle-boots with silver buckles, 'hip-hugger' purple corduroy bell-bottoms, and a buckskin coat with a large rainbow-coloured peace sign stitched onto its back. Beside me is an even taller lad, very sturdy, with a shock of thick blonde hair--that is my best friend Bjorni, who has tried ever since childhood to get everyone to call him 'Nalle', or 'Teddy-Bear'. Behind his back, however, Vaino's cruel nickname for him has stuck and we all call him 'the Walrus'. He is dressed more conservatively than I, in bell-bottomed jeans and a big white knitted sweater. Unlike me, he is extremely energetic and ambitious--and political. Neither of us actually goes to school here, having graduated the year before; now we are at university. I am at the Helsinki University Medical College studying to be a doctor like my father (in what you Americans would call 'pre-med'), and Bjorni is at the School of Economics--along with Vaino, who, Bjorni is telling me, has been expelled that very day and threatened to 'burn the place down' on his way out. How Vaino ever got allowed into it at all is a great mystery, since he dropped out of SYK in his last year here, the year that was our second-to-last--Vaino is precisely a year older than I. Is Vaino even here tonight? We look around the hall, our gaze as lofty as those of a pair of prodigal princes returning home to their rustic village; we both feel much more mature than all these noisy, chattering kids, the boys wrestling and shoving for seats near the prettiest girls, who are directing shy glances at the two of us. I look for Ronnie, who is something like a celebrity here in Helsinki; to be seen in his company tonight will put the seal on my triumphal homecoming coolness.

He arrives just after the curtain goes up, along with his stringy-haired girlfriend, but mercifully minus their loud and nasty little boy, while some pimply kid is up on the stage trying to make magic tricks with a balky rabbit. Rumour says Ronnie's girlfriend is a heroin addict, which in those days is considered very glamourous. We are near the front row and I have saved a pair of the antique wooden seats, polished by half a century of students' bums, in between me and Bjorn for them; next to me is sitting Matleena Linkola, the fourth girl I ever bonked and still an excellent friend and an even better source for gossip. She is a plump, jolly girl with mousy brown hair and a wide smile. She is telling me the latest story about Vaino and Aino, who have been the school's 'magical couple' for the past few years--I am sure you know what I mean, because every school has at least one of these, a pair of lovers richer and more beautiful than everyone else, and who are 'made for each other'. Last weekend, Matleena tells me, Vaino has had a big party at his father's house in Espoo to begin the holiday season, but Aino cannot come to it because her parents are leaving to go to Stockholm for a family Jultid and she must spend the evening at home with them, since it will be their last together. (BTW, I have been invited to this party as well, because Vaino is fascinated with me and invites me everywhere, but I do not go to it, not because I hate and fear Vaino--which I do--but because I am now in medical school, and for the first time in my life I am having to actually study hard, even on holiday nights!)

Ok, so midway through this party. Aino calls Vaino on the telephone. He is drunk and snogging with Heli Maalismaa, who was my girlfriend from a the year before, but who I have dumped when I started my 'new life' at university. This is typical of Vaino--he has always tried to bonk any girl that I have bonked; in fact, I have often been tempted to do it with some horribly ugly old slut with the clap just so that he will have to! While I am laughing inside at this comical thought, Matleena is telling me that suddenly, when Aino asks him who is that talking loudly beside him, Vaino goes crazy. He tells her that he and Heli have been bonking for years and that he is sick to death of her (Aino, that is) because she is so boring and stupid. Aino is naturally very shocked and hurt and starts to cry. It is important to understand that Vaino's father is a very wealthy and powerful businessman, and, highly unusual for Finland at that time, he has several telephone lines connected to amplifiers and speakers so that he can hold 'conference calls' in his home. Vaino pushes the buttons, so that now poor Aino's voice is echoing all through the main living room, crying and pleading with him. She says several things that are very embarrassing and make all the kids who hear it laugh, like 'But why? But why?" and 'Without your penis inside me, I'll die'. The next day, of course, Vaino agrees to stop seeing Heli and promises that everything will be just the way it was before with Aino. But meanwhile, the harm is done; all week long at school kids who have been at this party have spread the story (most of all, Heli, who is a great bitch), so now people are constantly yelling 'But why? But why?' in her hearing. Or coming up to her at lunch and pretending to cry and saying, 'Without that sausage inside me, I will die!' To most kids at the school these words are a new language, like Italian--at home, the parents of most Finns in those days barely speak at all, or if they do, just beat each other when they're drunk. But these are like lines from a Hollywood film, only meant with real feeling. They are fascinating, which is why they must be mocked. As a consequence, Aino has come home in tears every night this week, and her nerves are very upset for tonight's performance. It is at this point in Matleena's story that Ronnie arrives with his wife. A murmur has followed them down the darkened aisle from the front door. He and his 'old lady', as he calls her, are 'real hippies', not teeny-boppers like me; older, scruffy-looking, a bit dangerous. Ronnie is drinking viina from a crumpled brown bag--normally someone would stop him, but not tonight. Tonight all the devils are loose.

Before 'Kantele' will play, we must suffer through a scene from the musical 'Hair!' ('Tukka!'), performed in Finnish by the school drama club, a loud and very bad Suomirokki band called 'JOUKAHAINEN', and a brother and sister who juggle painted balls together to a recording of 'Stairway to Heaven.' Throughout these, Ronnie never stops talking loudly in 'Swenglish', sometimes about himself and his health symptoms, sometimes very funny comments about the untalented acts, which causes everyone around us to laugh but others to yell at him to shut up. Mattii grabs my arm; 'Look', she says, 'There is my friend Stina! She and Aino and I are like the "Three Sisters" these days.' Stina and another girl are presenting a short dramatic interpretation, for which they are wearing nothing but pale pink leotards and body stockings, of a scene between two women from a play by Waltari, as I recall, called 'Paratiisiin Eedenin'. It has been many years, so my memories of the dialogue are not so good, but it is between Lilit and Eeva, who are rivals for Adam and who hate each other. But in this scene they have discovered they have suffered many curses in common at the hands of Jumala, or Jehovah, (who is, after all, a man), including that of having their periods, so their complaints make them friends. No attempt was made to recreate the Garden of Eden behind them, instead each girl is lit by a spotlight in front of the big red curtain, Stina standing on the left side of the stage and Likki on the right, where I cannot see her very well. Because both girls have artfully sewn dark patches at certain places beneath their leotards, in the yellowish stage lighting they look as if they are entirely naked, which is a smart advertisement for any pretty young lady interested in a future film career, and at the sight of them Ronnie suddenly shuts up. 'Wow!' he says only. I peek quickly at the playbill; the two girls are named Kristina Ekblad and Kylikki von Essen. Strangely enough, I will soon spend a year or two of my life with each of them, though at that moment I have no eyes for Likki, in spite of her being the better actress of the two (Stina sounds too theatrical and rehearsed, Likki, on the other hand, speaks her lines as if she's just thought of them herself that very instant. And perhaps she did). But Likki is only 15 or 16 at that time and still looks very immature. Though, unknown to me, she has looked down from the stage and caught sight of my face in the audience while she is speaking her lines and fallen madly in love with me. Or so she will say some years later.

Off they go, to much applause and shouts of 'Strip off!'. Now it is time for Kantele. The curtain rises and the stage is filled with dim blue light, obviously in order to evoke the arctic night. The band comes out one by one and picks up their instruments, Aino, very pale, dressed in a white bridal-looking gown that touches the floor, straps on her guitar, Vaino, dressed a bit like a medieval minstrel, takes his, while the drummer and the bass player follow behind. 'Far out!' Ronnie says loudly in English. 'That's an original Stratocaster, man!' He lowers his voice, as an angry chorus of hushes breaks out around us. 'And look at that, an MK 300! I didn't even know there were any in Finland. Iesu Kristi! there must be 10,000 marks' worth of equipment up there.' Vaino goes to the Mellotron and fills the old dark hall with a few lush notes that rise slowly, majestically in volume. Now Aino starts to sing. The first few notes are sweet and pure, then suddenly she stops. The rest of the band stops playing. She apologizes and tells them to start over. There is a burst of nervous laughter from the audience. They start over from the beginning. This time Aino gets halfway through the first part and then hits a false note. She stops again, tries to pick up again where she left off, then she bursts into tears and runs off the stage.

But Vaino refuses to give up. He sets the Mellotron to play the same loops over and over and sings the song himself, playing both the rhythm and then the lead parts on his Fender--he sings very well, and for three or four minutes, the evening is rescued for him, though there is now no one to sing harmony with. The bass player tries, but this is a big mistake. Then suddenly the Mellotron goes crazy. The cycling mechanism jams, and after a moment spaghetti-like rolls of tape begin to leak out of the bottom; as this happens, the pitch and volume suddenly rise and the noise becomes terrible. Without hesitating, Vaino raises up his electric guitar like a fire-axe and smashes it down on the Mellotron. After three or four blows, the machine goes silent, its expensive keyboard smashed in (though the Stratocaster remains unscratched), and Vaino stalks off. The bass player has given up, but the drummer is still making little riffing fanfares out of spastic energy. 'Wow, man,' says Ronnie, getting up to leave. 'Thanks for turning me on to tonight. Those stupid (OK, he uses another word) rich kids could never hope to go on tour, not with the CMCs in that unit. But it wasn't a complete waste of time--they gave me some groovy ideas for my next concert!'

Mattti is also standing up. 'I have to go find Aino,' she says. 'Don't just sit there. Come on and help me!' So I wave helplessly at Bjorni and follow her backstage. He shrugs. As she passed by him, Ronnie's 'old lady' has just reached down and given Bjorni's balls a quick squeeze, so he remains seated.

There are no dressing rooms behind the stage, just a big store-room where everyone has stuffed racks of clothes and a single mirror. Aino is sitting on an old trunk looking like a dying princess in a fairy tale; she is no longer crying but appears to be calm. Stina is there holding her hand; she looks up and waves at Matti when she sees us. Her hair is coppery, not nearly so red as the Strawberry's, for instance, which is very fine and straight; no, Stina's is curly, which is rare in Finland. Matti rushes over dramatically to embrace Aino, and the two begin to talk with each other. 'Vaino has just dumped her again,' Stina says, her large blue eyes staring at me very wide. 'This time I think it's forever. Can't you talk to him?'

'Me?' I said. 'What would I say to him? Besides, I think he and Heli are made for each other.' She stares even wider, with her mouth open. Is this expression one of shocked surprise, or is she laughing appreciatively? Later I will learn that this is how she flirts with all guys and that actually it means absolutely nothing. Stina has read dozens of Swedish and English books on 'How to Get a Boyfriend' and from them has developed a whole range of rehearsed phrases and gestures in order to manipulate men. But she is not after a boyfriend or even a husband; she is far more ambitious than that.

'Don't you remember me?' she asks after a moment.

I squirm a bit, because I don't.

'It was last year on "vanhojen paiva".' (this is a sort of 'seniors' day, where graduating kids are allowed to do whatever they want all day until they are ceremonially kicked out by the class behind them. Naturally, the whole school takes the holiday off from classes.) 'You and I were smoking on the rocks?' I still can't remember. Now Stina grabs my hand. 'I was talking to you, and you just reached over and put your hand here like this'--and she places very firmly it on her right breast--'and said "Not even a handful. Come back when you're grown up".' She blushes. I am still young and stupid enough to fall in love with this blush. Suddenly, Stina seems very grown-up to me.

'Oh yes,' I say now. 'You.' Back then, she was just a skinny little kid from some small Swedish town on the western shore--she even talked funny. Now she talks just like Aino. And she isn't so skinny or little any more, either. Obviously, she has been studying very hard--but not, as I have said, from schoolbooks.

Now Matleena takes my other hand. 'Aino wants to go home, but her parents are in Sweden, and I don't want her to be alone tonight. Want to come to Kauniainen with us?' Oh ho, yes indeed I do. Oh yes! I don't even notice Likki staring wistfully after me on my way out; I barely even bother to tell Bjorni where I'm off to. I exit my old high school hall swaggering like Bob Guccione, publisher and editor of 'Penthouse Magazine', out into the snow with three pretty girls, just as another band begins to tune up inside. This will be the strangest night of my whole life, but I don't know that yet.

Next time: Pissing in cars.

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Don Juan in Helsinki: 11

This is Donho Likkanen. But I am too depressed to say 'hey'. Besides, I know what you want from me right now. You want me to tell you all about these three Finnish women I have loved when I was young. Luckily, I am in the mood to do this, because that is exactly the subject I have been thinking about tonight, since I have drinked nearly two whole bottles of Salmiakkikossu. Oops, drunk. If I can still type. Perhaps I can balance the iBook on the toilet. I wonder if it is waterproof. Ha, all toilets are waterproof, Donho, you are saying, you are the man who should know this. ROFkkkkkoyrurru. Hyee...

OK, I am back now. Lucky thing I wasn't podcasting just then. Sorry about the 'Hyee': that means 'ugh!' in Finnish.

All these questions to answer. You know, you are all just like the Strawberry, so curious about everything. Who, right now, is lying in my bed in the other room, snoring gently like a pig. Oh yes, I know what you are thinking, but it isn't true. She is still wearing her travel clothes, some sort of ugly white tank-top with a blue blouse over it and of course, her blue jean skirt and flip-flops. Well, the flips have actually flopped onto the floor, so I have covered her long pale plump legs with the ugly duvet bedspread. She fell asleep while we were watching 'Duudsonit', which seems to be be a program about four young Finnish men who do things like, for example, jump off of mountains into frozen lakes naked. (A reader has emailed me with this link: http://www.dudesons.com/main.site?action=frontpage/frontpage®ion=us Apparently the show has been picked up by an American cable channel.) The name of the show means 'Sons of Dudes', which I suppose we all are, in a way. This thought is so profound it nearly fills me with tears--just imagine it! All of us, everywhere on this planet, are the sons of some dude or another. Well, except for the babes. They are the daughters of dudes. In Finnish that would be 'Duudtytaret', which IMHO would be a much more popular show. Before that we watched 'Finnish Idol' and then two programs on two separate Finnish channels at the same time that are just people phoning in and text messaging. Yes, this is correct. Their text messages appear on the screen, and everybody laughs. And this costs the callers a dollar each time. The Finns are truly the Japanese of Europe. BTW, we never could find her any Cricket tickets for sale, not even from scalpels, I mean scalpers, once I hooked our laptops up to the hotel's Wifi. Did I mention the commercial for a department store where all the young people dance naked and all their genitals flip and flop around? When she saw this, the Strawberry said, 'Oh look, none of them are circumcised.' For some reason this made me feel very uncomfortable. I feel a bit more comfortable now, here in the bathroom. With my head on the floor. It is very cool here.

And I can pretend it is still nighttime, even though it is 3 am, and the sun is up and blazing away. I'll bring the iBook down onto the floor next to me. Oops. There went the mouse. I always keep a little mouse attached to my laptops because I hate those track-thingies. I guess I'll buy a new one tomorrow. If I'm still alive tomorrow. It isn't the drinking that is making me so sick right now, of course, it is the cancer. It has recurred, probably from the stress of this trip, and that is why I cannot move from the bathroom floor. That and simple human consideration. I would not want the Strawberry to find me lying dead in the bed next to her when she wakes up this morning. That would be a terrible shock for her. Much better that she should find me lying here in the traditional foetal position on the bathroom floor. But if I am truly dying now, first I must tell you the story of my three loves. Stina, Maarit, and Likki. Strawberry, chocolate, and vanilla flavoured hair, my three loves had, like a Neapolitan ice. It seems a pity now I could not have loved them all at the same time. Then it would all have been over with much more quickly. It would make it shorter to tell about now, as well. Obviously there isn't many hours left for me to live, so I will have to type much faster, and perhaps even use both hands. Seeing the beggar in the street today reminded me of them. To be specific, seeing him reminded me of the time my wife Likki ran off with him. And then, of course, after that she married him. Well she had to, didn't she, she had his baby. Perhaps I should have asked after his family when he was moving his bowels.

Oops. I think I told you I never was married. Was that you or was that the Strawberry? I get you confused in my mind sometimes. Well, never mind, either way I lied to somebody. But we weren't married very long, you see, just a few months. In America, such marriages don't really count, anyway; people have them all the time without even noticing, particularly in Hollywood. So it wasn't a big lie. It was tact. We Finns are probably the most tactful people on earth. For example, I was too tactful to kill him. Perhaps that was a mistake. Perhaps it sent the wrong message to the planet. 'Go ahead, do what you like to Likkanen,' it said, like a huge worldwide TV broadcast, 'He won't mind. He won't kill you. He is totally harmless, even to young women in his bed these days, LOL.'

Hyee. I need to stop this ROFLING and LOLLING for a little while, I think. That one hurt.

Of course, we Finns are not upset by nudity, not even on TV or in public places. Oh no, for us it is totally natural. We are brought up to run around naked as children and to sit naked in saunas with our friends and family. And of course, we are a very clean and healthful and attractive people, so this is not such a bad thing, though it makes it impossible here to lie about one's penis size, which one can do very easily in New York. In fact, many people even lie about their gender there. But I am surprised at myself, really, because suddenly I am not so very comfortable with it any more. Nudity, I mean, not my gender. After 25 years, am I suddenly becoming American? Or am I just becoming old? OK, I admit it, I am very upset. The reason is this, I have had that dream all over again tonight. Yes, it's true, after the Strawberry fell asleep, I became a bit drowsy myself watching MTV3 Channel and dozed off. Then suddenly I was back inside that cave again, only not from the very beginning, but from the end of the last dream, when I woke up on the airplane. It is just like the film "Castaway' with Tom Hanks, only instead of a basketball for a companion, I have 2,999 dead women. Yes, I counted them. In fact, I tagged them all with the magic markers; those whose names I could not remember I just assigned numbers to. 2,999. This means if only I was capable of bonking just one more I would reach 3,000. But I must tell you honestly, I do not want even one more--I do not want to have to dissect and eat the poor Strawberry, for instance, even if this is just a dream. And BTW, this is not only a 'recurring' dream, it is also now an 'episodic' dream, which I understand is very rare. However, from Googling it I have learned that some small number of people have these dreams every night normally, just as others can only dream in black and white, like oldfashioned television sets. Poor them! And poor me.

Because now in my dream I am standing over the dead body of my former wife, Kyllikki. So soft her skin, a tall, big girl very fair-haired, very much like the English girl in Paris. But with a chin and a trim little waist. Everything about Likki was bigger than life; her milky breasts, her grey-green eyes, her wide red mouth, her appetites. Of all the actresses I have ever known, she was by far the most talented. But she was never a serious actress; for her, everything was just a game. Like her marriage to me. Now in death, she is very blue in this light, and her freckles (of which she had many, like Stina and the Strawberry) look like someone has sprinkled her all over with cinnamon. This makes my mouth water. Now I am so very hungry that I have begun to think of plans for the best way to eat all those dead bodies. There is no way to make fire, of course (there is no wood, and I cannot strike sparks from stainless steel or fibreglass), so I will have to eat them raw, like sushi, which is possibly dangerous to the health. Nor can I sterilize my instruments between cutting them up, which will also be very risky. Nor can I wash them, because there is no water. And this is a bad thing in other ways, because I am now very thirsty, as well as hungry. So then I decide that i should drain the bodies of blood first, like in a kosher slaughterhouse. Perhaps I should begin with Likki, I think--after all, there is a justice in this. If I were writing a memoir, like that of Casanova, wouldn't I want to begin with the woman who has hurt me most? The same should surely be true of cannibalism, too, one would think. Though perhaps in this case, now that I reflect on it a bit longer, one might want to begin with the tenderest. And of course, the sweetest-tasting, something Likkanen is in some position to judge (I would LOL but no more of that for now). In a way, I suppose, I am simply employing a new technique to sensually explore their lovely soft female bodies. It is really just another kind of bonking! I find this thought very comforting.

But not for long. Because now I must deal with the practical aspects of butchery, which are almost as disgusting as the aesthetic. The human body carries many parasites, as well as the risk of bacteria from spoilage, such as salmonella. I remember this from my medical school. And if the slaughter process is sloppy, partially digested food-stuffs can contaminate the blood. This partially digested food is full of other, more foreign bacteria, some of which our bodies have no defense against. The meat could be rinsed and cleaned of these (if I had any water or disinfectant), but one cannot do the same with the blood.

But drinking human blood is not only disagreeable, it is also possibly toxic from all the iron in it, and one can get Porphyria and bloody stools from it, too. It is not so sexy as it seems in 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer'. There is also the risk of prion contamination, which are infectious proteins that cause things like 'Mad Cow Disease.' Generally, these proteins are only found in the brain, but sloppy butchering can cause them too. They could build up in the cells and give me something called "spongioform encephalopathy" (or spongy brain) where my brain would become riddled with holes, and I would begin to mentally degenerate. But since there is no way for me to sterilize, I must take this chance. If you notice any signs that I am going insane on my blournal, then please message me at once and point them out to me. But it might be very hard for you to tell the difference, since like all true Finns, I am very quiet and unemotional by nature. We are the types to react well in a crisis, and to use our excellent technical knowledge to solve many problems. For example, there is the matter of extracting and then preserving and storing the blood; if I were to pick up this sharp Number 3 scalpel and slice open Likki's wrist with it right now--like this--nothing would happen. She is dead, and her heart has stopped beating and so cannot pump blood anywhere, not even out of a hole. So in my dream, I must drag her over to one of the butcher's hooks hanging from the ceiling and attach her to it in the only place that will bear the full weight of her body, at the base of her skull. It is unexpectedly sad for me to do this, but I pretend she is just a huge but very heavy soft toy, like a floppy giant panda or something. Ok, now she is hanging there with her hair over her face, so I can drain the blood out of her body, but first I need something to drain it into. And then I realize that all over the airplane and in the rows of debris, there are many ducts and parts of storage containers, some intact, than be used for this. And in fact, I find some air conditioning pans that have even been used to store liquids. But now there is a fresh problem.

When I cut her open, she will produce fresh blood, or plasma. But within seconds, it will start to clot and separate into serum and a heavy dark solid clot at the bottom. The clotting is caused by calcium, so I must find a way to neutralize this. Also, I wonder, is it possible to separate out the salt? If so, I could preserve the rest of the bodies for their meat, making it into a kind of salted 'jerky' (as we Finns do with reindeer strips) and in this way perhaps survive for many months inside the cave. Because as matters now stand, without any chemical such as EDTA to preserve the blood or the meat, I will likely die within a few weeks, given that the temperature inside here remains constant and that I starve to death fairly slowly over the last week or two. But of course, by then the smell in here alone might kill me. While I am making these calculations, with my poor stomach hurting me so much from hunger, another thought occurs to me--perhaps I will only continue to live in my real 'waking life' for as long as I can remain alive inside the cave. If I die in this dream, then I will die for real! And so I take the scalpel, and make a deep incision on the bottom of Likki's dangling left foot. And suddenly I hear a long, horrible scream, and slowly, very very slowly, I wake up.

It is not me screaming this time. It is one of the Dudesons; MTV3 is playing a very loud commercial for their show, and it makes the Strawberry mutter and turn over in her sleep, jamming her tangled hair right up against me.Thank god for television. But it is after this happens that I decide I must start drinking very seriously for the rest of the evening.

And so it is about 3 am that I finally realize--this recurring dream is caused by the cancer! It is simply my brain's way of accepting what is happening to my body, by turning my disease into a very nasty and unpleasant metaphor. My brain is trying to make me glad that I will soon be dead. Very likely the cancer has spread already into my lungs and brain from my liver; certainly all three are feeling very ill indeed right now. For all I know, Salmiakkikossu could even be a cure, like chemotherapy or some sort of wonder drug found in the bark of a tree in the Amazon rain forest. In Finland there is a very old saying about disease: 'If it can't be cured by vodka, tar, or the sauna, then it will probably kill you.' Viina. Terva. Sauna. Stina. Maarit. Likki. I honestly, truly thought that after I had survived those three I was vaccinated against anything.

Now, I must explain this part very carefully, because you Americans will not understand it too well. In old Finland there were some aristocratic families, very rich and very powerful. Many of these were soldiers or merchants who had come from other countries to Sweden to serve in their army. The Ramsays from Scotland, the von Essens and von Julins from Germany, the Mannerheims from Holland. And some, like the von Rosens and the von Molens, were truly Swedish. Naturally, these great families all intermarried with each other; the father of our country, the great Marshall Mannerheim, for instance, was also half von Julin. Now, after the first war came 'Finlandization', after the second came socialism. Suddenly it is not so smart to be Swedish or even to be rich any longer. That is what Hugo von Molen, one of the wealthiest and most powerful men in the country, thinks. Who is Hugo von Molen? He is the father of Vaino Molen, the beggar we have just met in the street. He Suomifies his name from 'Hugo' to 'Ukko' and loses the 'von'. All the great families do this, as well, except for Likki's, who still go by 'von Essen'. They can get away with this still because even though they are no longer so very rich, they are still quite famous; Likki's great-aunt Siri, for example, was the actress who married August Strindberg. And to make matters even more confusing, under socialism suddenly there are no more expensive private schools for their children any more except in Sweden or Switzerland, of course. So the most exclusive middle and high school in the country, the Helsingin Suomalainen Yhteiskoulu, or 'SYK" as it is nicknamed, is now free and open to all, after very hard examinations, of course. And yet, somehow in spite of these entrance requirements, all the children from the wealthiest families continue to go there. Like me, for example. Like shy, pretty Aino Rosen, who only learns to sing and play the guitar. Like loud, sociable Likki von Essen, who barely bothers to even learn to read street-signs. Or like Vaino Molen, who has never studied any subject in his life. Except the art of cruelty.

OK, I will give you an example of this cruelty. I will tell you the story of a certain night.

Next time: A Christmas story.

Read more!

Don Juan in Helsinki: 10

Perhaps it was this sense of doom, of being abandoned by the Fates, that led me to order my first Finnish drink. I chose to begin with Marskin ryyppy, which was invented by Marshall Mannerheim; every bar has its own recipe, but it is usually Rakamaji akvavit or 'viini' mixed with vermouth and gin. In short, Finland's dry Martini. And this bar served a surprisingly good version of it for a tourist trap, though I found the seats very uncomfortable. There seemed to be very few Finns there at all; from all around me I heard snatches of conversation in German, in Swedish, but mostly in the flat, nasal accents of my adopted America:

'Dude, this so sucks, they put something in my sandwich. I'm running back to the room now, let me call you back when I'm on the toilet.'

'Do they even have Amstel Light in Europe?'

"The umbra of this city is Luciferian, so I have set warding spells over the Invisibles. They have already arrived at Düsseldorf and messaged us. If you do not believe it, here is a photo of their apparition."

'Finns are like a hot bath--ease into your time together with them or you will burn your genitals.'

'I'll be lucky if some Finnish guy even spunks in my lunch.'

'That's how you check a cat at the airport. You gotta look for nipples. It should be easy to tell, they've got like six of them.'

'Swedish is sort of like German, so I can understand some of it, because i grew up speaking German. That's what I wrote my PhD. thesis on, the fairy tales of the Black Forest. Oh, I thought it was you, Mr Likkanen. Gosh, I never thought I'd see you again!'

This last voice belongs to the Strawberry. Naturally, she is staying at this hotel, too. Of course. With her is a Finnish girl of about her same age. 'This is Riita Koivisto--she's here from the university to look after me.'

Riita shakes my hand in the brisk manly manner of European women. She is a very typical Finnish girl, with light brown hair, big white teeth, and sturdy arms and legs designed for sports. These are toasted a light, delicious brown from a July spent at her parents' cabin beside the lake or perhaps the sea. She has curtailed her holidays by a day or two to come back to Helsinki in order to practice her English on this silly American young woman. But she does not mind. You can see at once she is a 'daddy's girl', which in Finland means she wants everyone to like her. She probably rides a bicycle everywhere, taking 'meals on wheels' to the elderly in the evenings. She is athletic and has many hobbies. She has very firm opinions about everything. She is one of the reasons I left Finland. Though, of course, she was not born then, but she no doubt takes very much after her mother. She also takes an instant dislike to me. I am neither young enough nor yet quite old enough to excite her interest, so she assumes I am just some horny dog from the airplane who is chasing after the Strawberry. Up until that moment she did not like the Strawberry so much either, but now that I am in the picture, she suddenly becomes attached to her like a twin sister.

'This is not a very nice place,' she says. 'The service is very poor and they have no good selection of beers. If you want to drink seriously, I will take you to a real Finnish bar, like the MOCKBA.'

'Oh, I couldn't possibly drink anything if my life depended on it--not after that flight,' the Strawberry replies. 'I just wanted to come up here for the view.' Then she shows us a photograph of the Helsinki skyline in a guidebook taken from a window in this bar inside a ladies' toilet; naturally, she wants to visit the toilet in order to see it for herself, but first we have to wait in a long queue. Already, I am wishing for another Marskin ryppy. Finally, it is our turn to crowd ourselves into the cubicle together, and while the Strawberry hunches on the toilet lid, Riita and I lean over her and point out the spires of the Orthodox and the Lutheran cathedrals. And, yes, look, Helsinki does have its own space needle, after all, though it is not a revolving restaurant--it is the YLE radio/television broadcast tower. 'If you are hungry we will take a stroll to the famous Kouppatori market square, and you can sample many types of Finnish specialities there,' Ritta tells her.

'Oh, that sounds wonderful,' says the Strawberry, looking at me, 'Would you like to come, too? I mean,' she adds, blushing,' If you don't mind, Riita.' From the two women rises up a warm mingled aroma of girlish skin, a soft poisonous scent of soapy showers and summer sun; how I wish I could still become aroused by it! But--nothing. Not even jammed up against them both in this hot, intimate manner. And then I am struck by a sudden thought--I don't really need to make any hot monkeys with either of these young ladies to know exactly what they would both be like in bed. But here is the difference between them. With the American, it would be so boring and predictable I could probably blog about it in advance and not have to make any updates for corrections. But with the Finnish one, there would always be some sort of strange surprise--a frog in the bed, a finger up the wrong place. If I tried to kiss her now, she might bite half my tongue off. As if sensing such thoughts, Riita pulls back from me a little. Her answer is very long in coming, and when she speaks, it is in Finnish, to let me know that I am an outsider and therefore not part of her own personal cultural exchange program.

'Yes, of course you are invited to come with us if you like,' she says unenthusiastically. And that is the moment when I first realize that I have lost my command of the Finnish language, because I open my mouth to say no--and out pops the word 'kylla'. Yes.

Market Square lies opposite the Esplanadi from us, so we have to walk through it on the way to get there. It is a bit like a slice of Central Park, the part near 5th Avenue, if you can imagine that being just a few blocks from the East River. It has scarcely changed at all in the time I have been away. The Esplanadi is filled with benches, lots of cast-iron statues, and because this is a sunny Friday late afternoon in July, by the other half of Helsinki, the half that has not gone to the airport. It is bounded on the north by Pohjois-Esplanadi (where Cricket's personal trainer is now napping in my suite at the Hotel Kamp, next to the Moomin Shop) and on the south by Etelä-Esplanadi; supposedly in the days when Swedish and Finnish were at war with each to become the dominant language and culture, the Finns kept to the north side and the Swedes to the south. Now there are expensive stores and restaurants on both boulevards, a bandstand in the middle where a 'soft rock pop' band is playing, and long lines at the little medieval sausage kiosks with their steep, pitched roofs. Riita stops and insists we buy coffee at an outdoor bar. Because it is dark most of the year here, she explains, we are the world's largest consumer of coffee per capita. The other reason, she adds, is that Finns are so often hungover. So I do not want any yet, even if this were true. I buy a glass of 'viina' instead, local Finnish vodka. When the Strawberry sees the sign for the big 'Academic' book store, she gives an excited squeal.

'Oh my God, I'm going to spend my first free afternoon shopping there--after the Moomin Shop. Everything here is so lovely and interesting!'

'Is this city really very different than your Chicago?' Riita asks her. It is difficult to tell if she is A) being ironic, B) bored and merely practicing her English, or C) just stupid. Then I remind myself: she is Finnish. So the answer is D) all of the above.

'Oh yes, really different. Helsinki is full of history!'

Something inside me then causes me to open my mouth and say, 'I hate history.' Strawberry looks at me with her mouth wide open with surprise. But it is true, I do hate history, and I will tell you why. History is the reason I will not bonk any old ladies any more. And by old ladies, of course, I mean any woman over 40. Of course there are many other reasons not to bonk them--wrinkles, grey hairs, saggy body bits, bad smells, boring conversation, etc--but history is the biggest reason that I refuse to do it. Because they all have some of it nowadays. It is like a sexually transmitted disease.

I will give you an example of what I am talking about. A few years ago, I met a lady who was in her 40s on NySpace.com, and after a very nice dinner and evening at the theatre together, I decided to bonk with her, in spite of her extremely advanced age. Because, to be fair, she really did not look so old at all; she exercised and kept very fit, and I'm sure could have fooled any man without the 'artist's eye' of a Likkanen that she was a normal young woman. Of course, she made no secret of her age, which was my first warning clue. The second and final one came a few nights later after we had made some hot squishy monkey sex for several hours, which I admit to finding surprisingly pleasant and even interesting, because, unlike a young chick, she seemed to be enjoying it so much. 'Oh Donho'' she says to me, 'You are the only man over 50 I have known who can make love like a young stud without using viagra.' And of course, she finds this very amusing. But to tell you the truth, I am made a little uncomfortable by her words, because, OK, to be completely, totally honest with you, I had been experimenting with this drug at that time. But only for two or three years or so. So I make a huge mistake--I change the subject and encourage her to talk about other things, even herself. Next thing I know, here it comes: her history. First I hear all about her failed marriage, the many years of living together with this fellow during college and then after, when she becomes pregnant, and they get married and have two kids. Very boring stuff (don't worry, I won't go into any details). So then suddenly for no reason, he decides he is gay! They have a bitter, nasty divorce, but she has to keep seeing him because he is father of these two kids, who are now apparently away at university (at least I hope so, since we are making hot squishy squirrels at her place). So next he suddenly gets AIDS, so she spends some years nursing him until he dies and hardly bonks anybody during that period. But once he is dead, she goes crazy making up for lost time--her lover before me is an African student half her age who she was thinking of marrying in order to give him a green card, but he suddenly rushes back to Africa instead. By then I know just how he feels! Great, I think to myself; now I have to worry about AIDS coming in both the back door and the front door. You see? Half an hour ago I was OK with her--now I am not. History has ruined everything! And that is the case for most people, they just refuse to admit it.

But perhaps not quite all of us. I look up to notice that for the first time this girl Riita is smiling at me with approval. At last I have said something to make her accept me back to her sturdy bosom as a true Finn. You see, she hates history, too. We Finns all do; to us, history is either Swedish or Russian, just like the architecture and even the original street-names here. So a Finn lives only in the present day. Even the Kalevala is only a clever invention to give us 'identity'; there is not any real history in it, it is just a bunch of silly old folk songs. But I do not have the heart to tell the Strawberry any of this, so I keep silent. After all, she has saved up her hard-earned money for a whole year and then flown all the way across the ocean with her head in a bag in order to spend her summer vacation studying fairy tales. Obviously, here is a girl with lots of 'sisu'.

So we make our way down the Esplanadi stopping every few moments to sample ‘rahkapulla’ (tarts filled with lemon and vanilla flavoured quark, which is Finnish sour cream), ‘viili’ (gelatinous yogurt-like sour milk), or Karelian rice pasties. The chatter of the two girls was beginning to irritate me deeply, along with the glare of the late afternoon sun and the tuneless throb from the bandstand, so I went into a touristy bar called the 'Strindberg' and ordered a Salmiakkikossu. This drink is made from Kostenkorvu Viina, a very clear powerful type of local Finnish vodka, mixed with Salmiakki. Salmiakki is Finland's most popular candy, a black licorice salted with ammonium chloride; blended with Kostenkorvu, it tastes as if unsweetened anise concentrate and salt have been added to ethanol petrol and then pissed in. Or perhaps it tastes more like a salted melting rubber tyre, it's hard to say. The moment it touched my palate, it made me very nostalgic. This flavour was a potent reminder of how I had spent most of my teenaged years. I am finally beginning to relax now and feel 'at home'. And as I am sipping it, I suddenly notice a very strange little fellow who has been loitering behind us for some blocks. To describe him is very difficult, but I shall try. Something about his movements and the way he holds his head on his tiny neck reminds me of 'Gollum' from the 'Lord of the Rings'. He is very pale and very thin, almost starved-looking, so that the veins pop out from the bones in his legs. I cannot tell if he is young or old; he is wearing a coarse purple linen golf-shirt, a pair of wide khaki Patagonia short pants (I know this because I own a pair), thick white socks, Danish Ecco Birkenstock sandals gilded a bright gold, and his short whitish hair is all but hidden beneath a pale blue beret. Why is he stalking us? Is he some fellow with a crush on Riita perhaps? Or has he noticed the Strawberry and fallen madly in love with her?

The Market Square, or 'Morning Market' as it was called in my youth (because it closed every day at noon), is a bit of a disappointment to the Strawberry, I can tell. It is mostly seling fresh produce and fish--nothing we can keep in a hotel room--and stall after stall of tourist trinkets, many of them made in China. But by now the two girls have discovered a new interest in common: Cricket. And not the kind with bats and little rubber balls, either. No, the kind who is having a giant concert at the Hartwall Arena on Sunday night. Suddenly the Strawberry is seized with desire for a ticket.

'Well, I will see what i can find for you tomorrow,' Riita says very dubiously. 'But you know, it is very late to be doing this, the concert has been sold out for months.' And then, after making sure we know our way back to the hotel, she takes her leave of us rather abruptly. Of course, I realize why: she has a pair of tickets herself, most likely she is going with her best female friend or perhaps a boyfriend, and she knows that if she lingers much longer she will be tempted to offer up her own to the Strawberry. This, after all, is how one is supposed to treat a guest. But she doesn't want to, so she must leave quickly. Naturally, being Finnish, she will now feel guilty for this all night.

'Do not eat any of the food at that hotel,' are her last words to us.

'I'll go online when we get back to see if if I can find any tickets,' the Strawberry tells me just as if I care. 'You'll help me with the Finnish sites, won't you?' and I nod glumly. Of course I will. That is all Likkanen is good for any more, anyway, just as in those primitive African tribes where the toothless old men of the village are made to perform oral sex on young virgins, since they are considered too old to pose any phallic threat any more. Even Riita has given up fearing me. On the walk back I will stop at another bar and have a second rubber tyre drink and then decide to buy a bottle of it to take back to the hotel room. Later that long endless evening I will buy a second. For a true Finn it is almost like a real meal, only in liquid form. I find I am feeling extremely nostalgic, after all. Because I'm afraid I have not been totally honest with you. Yet. I have not come back to Finland just to die. Or just to scout locations for dying, like for a film shoot. No, no, I must now make a full confession. I know that you are already thinking from what you have read so far in my blournal that Donho Likkanen has never been in love. Oh ho, you are saying, he is far too cold and selfish and studly a dude for that, LOL! A real Casanova! And almost a real blonde. But in fact, I have been in love three times in my life. And all three women were Finnish, just like this Riita person. And it is actually them I have also come back to visit in the hopes that perhaps I can find some tiny flicker of caring left for me still, find someone who might still love me just a little bit after all these years. Because I have test-driven all the other women in the world, and I must be honest with you. They are not Salmiakki. Maybe many women in the world have interest in bonking with Likkanen, but nobody actually loves Likkanen. Nobody at all.

A true Finn, of course, is never seriously depressed. The fact that we have the highest suicide rate in the world is easy to explain; we are simply accident-prone. Especially in winter. But now it is a little after midsummer; Helsinki lies just below the Arctic Circle, so tonight we will have perhaps an hour or two of 'darkness' after midnight, when the sun will just be a glow on the horizon. You see? It is no wonder that we sometimes need a drink to get to sleep. Or two. Now, all over downtown Helsinki, the serious drinking has begun--in Finland this is called 'pre-party drinking'. Many of the young men--and a few of the young women, too, I notice--have taken off their shirts and some their pants; most of them are sipping beer or spirits from bags. We walk slightly north on our way back, so that I may show the Strawberry a bit more of the city; she wrinkles her freckled nose at the puddles on the sidewalks in front of doorways and the splashes on the walls. And then, a block or so from the train station, another disaster happens.

In front of us is a bit of a disturbance; an old beggar, his pants halfway down his hairy legs, is singing loudly and swaying about, waggling his penis. Which has a tattoo on it, I notice. Now in Helsinki, even buskers are fairly rare; beggars are almost unknown, though there were a few drunks in my time, one or two of them women, who were what Americans would call 'local characters'. Often these will spend the summers 'living rough' in dumpsters and parks. But even nowadays to see someone begging on the street with a plastic cup on the paving stone in front of him is very unusual, and several young people, their faces already politely glazed by drink, are staring at him out of simple curiosity. When he sees me, he waves, then hops forward and says in English, 'Hey, lover-boy, give me some of your money. You must pay to cross the river.' 'Lover-boy, or 'Lemminkainen' in Finnish, was my nickname when I was young and in school. Without thinking, I reach into my pocket, but all I can find in it is a twenty-dollar bill. I pull it out anyway and cautiously hand it to him.

'Put it in the cup,' he says, smiling. His teeth are very dirty. His hair is lank and long and grey, and he has a sharp bristling white beard from a week or two of not shaving. In spite of the heat, he is wearing an overcoat. His clothes are torn and darkly stained with filth, and he smells very bad indeed. He catches sight of the Strawberry standing uncertainly behind me, and leers and winks at her. 'This one isn't too bad,' he says appreciatively. Then, very slowly and deliberately, he squats down on his haunches and takes an enormous black, smelly shit on the sidewalk. The Strawberry stares at this in shock, so I take her arm and lead her very gently away, before the beggar can catch up with us. But he is done. 'I'll give your regards to my wife when I see her!' he shouts after me in Finnish, and then he starts singing again. In the distance I catch sight of a blue beret. And I see it again, along with the Gollum face beneath it outside our hotel lobby. This is very worrying and upsetting to me, to be followed around like this.

The Strawberry has said very little on our way back to the hotel. For me, used to Hawaii time, jet-lag came many hours ago, For her it hits now, all at once, and she looks suddenly pale and exhausted and takes my arm to lean on. Besides, she is still upset from the business on the sidewalk, so I don't mention the Gollum to her. 'Who was that poor old homeless guy anyway?' she asks me at last in the hotel lift. 'He sort of looked like you. And he definitely acted like he knew you. Was he a friend of yours when you were young?'

'When you were young'. How cruel women can be, even the Strawberry. It is almost sexy of her. Cruel and a bit rude, too, sometimes, even when they do not mean to be. Often it is far more polite just to lie. So I lie to her now.

'No, of course not,' I say. Technically, of course, this is not a lie at all--he certainly was never a friend to me. But I have noticed that American women are very Catholic, deep down inside themselves; they all want white weddings, and they all believe a man lies by omission. What I do not not say, among many other things, is that once upon a time that poor old guy singing and begging and crapping on the street was one of the richest young men in Finland. And, next to me, the most good-looking.

Next time: The naked truth.

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Don Juan in Helsinki: 9

The international aviation designation for Helsinki-Vantaa Airport is 'HEL'. It was built the same year my mother was pregnant with me and opened just in time for the Helsinki Olympics. Then I was born. So it was a summer of great celebration for Finland. Now my country has cause to celebrate again: Likkenen is returning home. Unaware of this, perhaps, Finland lies dozing beneath a thick quilt of puffy grey clouds. Why is it that in America even the sky is so much bigger?

Made bold by rescuing me from nightmares and no doubt, nervous by our impending landing after such a long, terrifying flight, the Strawberry will not now shut up. She talks about everything under the sun. The pale, lemony Nordic sun, which beams down on us from directly overhead, creating a dark feathery shadow on the cloud cover below, like that of the Sielulintu, the mythological Finnish 'soul-bird', who protects the sleeper from getting trapped inside his dreams and never waking up again. She talks about her mother (whom she calls 'the Mothership') worrying in Ohio or wherever and how she must telephone her the moment she lands, about cell-phone coverage and roaming charges, about her love of light opera, and about the 'Silmarillion' of J. R. R. Tolkien. Then she asks me what is the 'Sampo'? But her talk so boring that I am not listening to it, and I think she is saying 'sambo' instead.

'That is what you Yanks call a "partner",' I tell her. 'You know, if you have lived together a long time but do not intend to marry.' She stares at me in stupefaction. I feel so sorry for her then. Poor thing, I think, to have one's emotions always so naked. She needs sexy underwear for them.

'No, no, I mean the Sampo in the Kalevala. Last night I was reading about its resemblance to the 'horn of plenty' and the Welsh 'Cauldron of Annwn', but I couldn't find any description of it. Did they teach you what it looked like in school?'

'No,' I reply. 'It is just a three-sided magical mill. It spits out food and gold. And wood products. Then, as I recall it, someone throws it into the Baltic Sea, where it lies on the bottom and makes salt.' It was also the name of the old post office bank of Finland--rather like "Western Union". If there is a Sampo at work today, its modern name is Nokia. BTW, we pronounce the 'k' as a hard 'g'; nokias are a kind of bird. Nokia began life as a paper mill, then manufactured rubber tyres and galoshes. Now the company controls a quarter of the Finnish economy and is by far the biggest employer; it has been a magical mill indeed, grinding out gold from technology. And if any malevolent god should ever toss it into the sea, then suddenly Finland would be poor again, because there is very little other industry or services to employ anyone.

You see, Helsinki is not really a true Scandinavian or even Baltic city at all--it faces the Gulf of Finland and Russia to the east. It is this gulf that divides Europe from Asia. And it is on the Asian side that the true Finnish homeland lies, in the dark forests surrounding Lake Ladoga in Karelia, the country the Russians stole from us. The landscape we are flying over now, the southern tip of Finland with its thousand lakes, was mostly Swedish in its history. I have a Finnish father and a Swedish mother, so my soul stands with one foot in both these two lands. I am not alone in this schizophrenia; everything in Finland, including Helsinki (Helsingfors) has both a Finnish and a Swedish name, right down to its neighborhoods and even city streets. As a child, I thought these all referred to quite different, warring places, and I only felt truly 'at home' on the island of Aland, which lies halfway between them, where my parents sometimes took me for our summer holidays. Or sometimes to the south on the island of Gotland. My father was a great Finnish nationalist, and this was as far as he would travel from his native soil, though he once visited Estonia by ferry. My Swedish grandfather Frederik was also a nationalist but of a very different sort, as we will see. It was him who took me to see the famous 'birth-cave' on Gotland. 'Here is where the Gothic race was born,' he told me. 'Who would ever have imagined that someday it would conquer Rome and rebuild the ruins of Carthage?' Of course, I was too young then to see that the two men detested each other, which was why our family holidays had to be held on these small, neutral islands. Like all little boys, I was happy to bask in the love of all. My father's father, also a doctor, had died in the Winter War, but my father's mother was also quite attached to me; she was a silent, sweet-tempered woman who looked exactly like Nikita Krushchev in drag.

Now the fluffy clouds begin to thin and part enough to peek through, and we begin our long slow descent. Vantaa (Vanda) is the most punctual airport in the world, so it will not do to be late, oh no. It was the same with my school days, with my father's practice, with meals and parties and all appointments. Finns are always on time. Even to orgies. No wonder no one likes us. I look down now and see we are flying over Nurmijarvi, low enough to see trees and roads and the rooftops of tiny houses. Beyond it, the tiny runways of the airport, nestled between the Keha Ring Road and Highway 45. Everything is tiny, like the Faller and Heljaen and Airfix plastic models I played with as a child; toy trains, toy houses, toy cars. These things, I know, will still seem small to me even when I am on the ground, will still look like little plastic toys--even more than the Swedes or the Swiss, we Finns have a talent for miniaturizing the outside world and making it clean and safe. And, of course, punctual. Because here we are, landing precisely on time! Finnish time is UTC plus 3 (though it is actually plus 2 at this moment for daylight savings time). It is early afternoon, so I have lost nine hours of my life flying backwards. Traumatized by her ordeal on this flight, the Strawberry has her eyes shut as we approach the runway; her hands grasp the arm-rests so tightly that the knuckles pop out, and I can tell that she secretly wishes to hold my hand again. But I deny her this comfort. I must be cruel to be kind. As soon as the wheels touch down, unless we should crash on the tarmac and I need her to help me push out an emergency exit window, our relationship is at an end.

There is a single great bump and thud, then the tyres scream as they are thrown into reverse. We slow to a crawl, then turn off the runway toward the terminal. We have landed. And for the first time in 30 years, I am back in Finland. Oh ho, Donho, I hear you saying, this could become very boring indeed. Why do I want to know anything about Finland? I don't even care about Nokia--I have a Motorola Razr. But do not worry, this story will not be a long travelogue. If you are interested in learning about this little country come and see it for yourself. The air fare and the hotels are priced very reasonably for tourists, though you will be shocked at the prices for everything else. No, no, this is not about Finland--it is about me. I am only Finnish by an accident of history. Still, I feel some excitement inside me at the thought of being back home again. Back home! Imagine it, I was actually born in this humble soil! On the day I left, I could still have run down the steps of the plane and knelt and kissed the ground, like the Pope does in newsreels, but now there are docking bays to the terminal instead of ramps, just like in a real airport. So if I want to kiss my native soil I will have to wait until I am actually on the highway to the City Centre. After Cricket's party have exited first to go to their special 'media lounge', then there is a great clattering and bustling of activity as the rest of us remove our suitcases from overhead and pull on our jackets. I give the Strawberry a final Judas kiss to her pink cheek and it is our turn to be off. She has suggested that we share a taxi-cab from the airport; I have said no. Likkanen has seen the last of her.

Inside the terminal, it is a madhouse. Half of Helsinki is here, at least the teenager half. And all the gay blades and the lesbians too, under a banner that says 'Queer Friends Club'. But they are not here to greet me, thank goodness! It is Cricket they have come to see. Well, they can have her. I have more important business to attend to--I have to find myself a good place to die. But first, I have to find myself a good place to drink. Outside, there are more crowds gathered around a fleet of Mercedes limousines--which explains why i could not reserve one for myself--and as I manage at last to flag down a bright yellow VW Taksi, I have a terrible sinking feeling. Will I find this same situation at the hotel? (I do, as we shall see.) But in the meantime, the delicate Likkanen nose is overwhelmed by a new palette of scents, and with them an almost paralyzing rush of emotion--the smell of salt and sea, of scrub grass and pine forest, of petrol fumes and the slight odour of tar that is everywhere in Finland. There is a popular tar-flavoured candy here called 'terva', imagine that. There is even terva ice-cream! But there are no words in Finnish for 'please' or 'excuse me'; here, courtesy is best expressed by total silence. My driver is a true Finn, not a Somali or Egyptian, as you would find in New York. There has recently been a presidential election (and the red-haired lady who looks like Conan O'Brien has been reelected for six more years by only 2% of the vote), but he does not intrude his political opinion of this matter (or any other) upon me. He is supernaturally courteous all the way downtown to my hotel, but at the end of the trip he will present me with an additional 'music fee' for the racket we are listening to on his radio, mostly Cricket songs. Luckily I can keep the car windows open. It is summer and the day is swelteringly hot for Finland, which means I am comfortable in my jacket. Now I look to see the changes that thirty years have made to my home town. So here is the travelogue, and if it is boring to you, just log in for my next post. Or close your eyes while you read this part and think of bonking.

Helsinki is a city of about half a million people, with another half spread around the three suburban cities that are connected by the inner and outer motorway rings. Of these three, Espoo (Esbo) is also Finland's second-largest city all by itself and, along with Tampere (Tammerfors) in the middle of the country, makes up Finland's 'Silicon Valley'. But only about one third of the land is developed inside the city limits; the rest is park and forest and lake--and empty grey muddy gravel fills. Houses are generally tiny and crammed together, apartment blocks are heroic and the old ones, like the older government buildings, designed by the Italian architects who originally built Petersburg. Most of these buildings are still standing, but between them now are dozens of new glass boxes, scattered about the landscape like huge aquariums filled with tiny lights. There are trams and trains running everywhere, Finnish-designed and Finnish-built to look like fat insects on wheels, in front of bright awnings and toy shop-fronts, and huge billboards advertising vodka and radio personalities. This is all new. Thirty years ago, the genial and popular communist puppet 'St. Urho' Kekkonen still ruled, the SUPO spied on all us hippie youths, and the country had more than a little of Russia's Stalinist grey drabness and shabbiness. In fact, back then it was often used as a stand-in for Moscow when filming James Bond films. Now, all is clean and shiny. The highways and roads are much wider and brighter than in those days, the traffic is heavier, though still lighter than in America. Even on a summer afternoon in bright sunlight the headlights of all the motorcars on the road are switched on, presumably by some new intrusive law designed to reduce accidents in a land where most highway deaths are still caused by hitting a moose. Strangely, however, it gives the traveller the feeling that all these vehicles' drivers are drunk. That is very possible here in Finland. Certainly my driver is, judging from the smell of his breath; he drives precisely the speed limit, working the accelerator and the brake with two feet at the same time, so that our journey consists of over a million little lurches. However the final fare, even with 'Cricket tax' added, still comes to less than $40, in spite of the dollar being so weak, so even though anyone but another Finn would be puking his guts out by now, I consider this ride a bargain. Though I find it a bit of a shock to be paying for it in Euros, rather than the old Finnish 'markka'.

OK, now here is another thing you must understand about Finland, though I hate to keep mentioning this boring subject. Already the country is annoying me, and I'm sure it is the same for you. Just as in August all of Paris shuts down, so does all of Helsinki in July. Everything--the subways, the trams, the bars and restaurants, the movie theatres, even the news on television, is on 'Sunday service.' This was true thirty years ago, and, I am swiftly discovering, far more truer right now, since these days Finland is so 'rich', and thus everyone desires to take their month of summer vacation at the same precise time as everyone else (don't worry, they will get another month off at various times over the winter). All over the countryside in a few small towns and beach resorts, business is booming, and most of Finland is eating Tyrkisk Peber candy at Moomin World, fishing at their summer cabins, or flocking to the world's weirdest festivals--the 'Sex Festival' in Kutemajarvi, perhaps, or the 'Witch Trials' and 'Kissing Competition' in Ruovesi, or of course, the world-famous 'Wife Carrying Championships' in Sonkajarvi (www.sonkajarvi.fi/?deptid=14952). I think I am being very clever to have arrived precisely at the last weekend in July, when no one will be about but just before they all return home again. However, because I did not know about the 'Cricketmania' now sweeping over this place like a plague of locusts, I could not have been more stupid. Well, to be fair, I am about to be a great deal more stupid, but I do not know this yet in the story, so please forget I have just told you so. However, on this particular day, the last Friday in July, no information kiosks or sales counters are manned, or if they are, by surly people who are either dead drunk or on their cell-phones. Even the service at the front desk of Helsinki's finest hotel, the Hotel Kamp, leaves a great deal to be desired. Because, just as I feared, this is where Cricket and her entourage are staying! The woman has cursed me like a witch! And naturally, she has taken the top two floors, including the suite I had reserved. Now it is true, the management has given me another, much smaller room lower down and for free--but the Polish girl who tells me this is new on the job, and I am tired and not understanding either her English or her Finnish very well. In fact, I will have this problem with Finnish for the next few weeks--I have simply forgotten much of it after thirty years. I will open my mouth to say one thing, and quite another thing will fly out. By the time I have recollected it completely, it will be time to leave. But I don't know any of this yet. So I decide to have a tantrum.

And that is how I come to be looking for a new hotel. Now, thirty years ago, this would be a problem, because in those days even the Kamp was not a quite a true 5-Star, it was still just a bit like the Metropol in Moscow. But in these happy modern times, according to my Googling, there are at least half a dozen world-class 5-Star hotels in Helsinki. And this is something else you must know about me--I will not happily stay in anything less than 5 Stars. It is simply a matter of principle, because of my health and personal tastes. I know that other lucky peeps can be just as happy with far less. But not Likkanen. And an unhappy Likkanen makes all around him unhappy--so it is actually a public service for me to avoid being provoked into tantrums. Quiet luxury does much to soothe this.

But when I tried the SAS Radisson Royal, they were completely full up! This time, however, I was patient (or perhaps just exhausted) enough to let the young Flemish fellow at the desk Google some sort of local hotel database they keep online. But no good deed ever is rewarded, because this generous mood of mine led to the worst disaster of all. The only suite he could find for me was at the Hotel Torni, which he assured me was 4-Star. Now, the Torni is Helsinki's oldest and most famous hotel, and it also happens to be the place where I went on my very first 'date'. Yes, this is true! In those days, the tower of the Torni, which is nothing like the revolving 'space needle' restaurants in Seattle or Toronto but is modelled after some church tower in Florence, Italy, had a restaurant at the very top, and this was the highest point in all Helsinki, so that one could see a view of the whole city skyline from there. It was considered very romantic indeed for dating in 1969. But here is the funny part--It is only 18 storeys high! The Torni was built in 1931, so finally after 60 years, Helsinki decided to build a much taller 'skyscraper' --and now a modern glass building towers above the Torni, which is a huge 24 storeys high, LOL! Why are there so few tall buildings in Helsinki? In a word, caution. The city is like a metaphor for socialism: 'Keep your head down or it will get chopped off'! Only true peasants make good socialists. And traditionally Finland was like those paintings by the Russian Bilibin, a little fairy tale of pine trees, log cabins, and big blonde people wearing striped stockings with their hair cut in fringes. Now the peasants gel their hair into dreadlocks, wear tongue piercings and tattoos and tap text messages over their cell phones--like the hundreds wandering about the city's parks in stoned or drunken stupours as I made my way to Yrjonkatu, some of them pissing on the sidewalks. When I saw that, I knew I was truly home again.

But at the Torni, disaster. It was not even a 4-Star any more--it was now a 3-Star! It had been downgraded just the week before! I was given one of the renovated 'glass' rooms, but it still smelled a bit of mildew. I had forgotten how everything in Finland is built small and rather shabby by American standards, how every surface is cheap, over-polished wood.On the TV was a loud strip-poker game show 'Rasypokka'); most of the guests were already half-naked. This was immediately interrupted by commercials for Lordi, the Finnish heavy-metal monster-masked Eurovision contest winners and 'Koff' beer, 'brewed by the Devil!' The word for 'devil', BTW is 'perkele', which is Finland's worst swear-word. Sitting on the mock-quilted futon bed cover, I felt too depressed even to blog. If I were not Finnish, I would have cried. Instead, I decided I needed to get drunk in the worst way. In Finland there are many, many ways to get drunk, of course, each of them worse than all the others. So with so many to choose from, I naturally made the stupidest decision possible--I went up to the Atelier Bar at the top of the tower. But of course, I was doomed anyway.

Next time: I meet an old enemy...

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Don Juan in Helsinki: 8

Now I was falling. The film I had walked through was nothing but a blue plastic sheet covering a hole where the cockpit had disappeared from the rest of the aircraft, and I had stepped right into it, then fell about 5 or perhaps 6 metres, which if you are American will mean nothing to you. If you are from the rest of the world, however, you will understand that i fell from about two or three times my own height very hard onto a floor or surface that felt a bit like linoleum. This hurt quite a lot; somehow I managed to twist myself in the air and land mostly on my feet, so now I felt a terrible shock go through me, as if every bone in my body was broken. But I could still move, so perhaps they weren't. Oh ho, dude, this must really be a dream after all, I said to myself as I lay there. In real life you would be dead all over again. Or perhaps I am dead, I thought next, and this is just like the film 'Death Becomes Her,' and my bones will keep breaking, and nasty pieces will keep falling off me, and i will not even notice. I will just keep stumbling and tottering around like a zombie for eternity instead of evolving into a pure spiritual being of light, like in the film, 'Cocoon.' But maybe this might not be such a bad thing, after all--at least I could still hold on to my penis.

BTW, speaking of my penis (as so many lucky former lovers often do) a reader has just sent me to this link: http://www.spikemagazine.com/spikepen.php It is a story about a man whose penis tastes like chocolate. To her natural enquiry, I can only say this--I have been told by many lovely ladies that my penis tastes like the leading exported candy of my native land, which is licorice. Finnish 'Panda' licorice comes in two flavours, anise, which is dark, and raspberry, which is pink. Though I may look bright pink to the naked eyeball, I have been told that I greatly resemble the anise. Everyone wants a piece of Likkanen, LOL!

So, thinking these sorts of thoughts inside my head, which normally would be deeply erotic for me, I found the courage to open up my eyes again and look around myself. At first I thought the place I was lying was some great huge airplane hangar, and that the cockpit had somehow become detached from the rest of the fuselage for maintenance or something, after the plane had successfully landed and the passengers all disembarked. For some reason I had been overlooked and left behind, perhaps because I was sleeping so soundly. Or perhaps Cricket had paid the flight attendants to leave me there out of revenge. She was not such a cruel, bitter person when i knew her, but people can change over time, you know. Particularly women. Particularly after I have parted with them.

But soon I realized I was mistaken. The airplane looked very strange, indeed--it was not resting on its struts at all, but rather on a framework of metal scaffolding. Also, it had no wings or cockpit, and seemed to have been assembled like a giant jigsaw puzzle from many little pieces. Piled in neat rows on either side were other pieces of the plane, some small, some large and mostly intact, that had not been glued back on yet. And all of them had little numbers on them written in magic marker. I leaned down and picked up a jagged sheet of fibreglass and saw it was marked 'RRWSAER156wt343708'. Another piece beside it said 'LFDSAER144wt449862-B. And both were written in my hand-writing! So obviously in my dream--or in my afterlife, or whatever--I have been putting together all the pieces of the aircraft after the crash, just like the special FAA and FBI task force does it in films. What a lot of work to go to, This is not like me at all. Then I think, uh oh, perhaps this is some sort of atonement or Karma. But why? Why punish me? I wasn't flying the plane. It wasn't my fault that it crashed. I wasn't even making hot squishy squirrel sex in the toilet with the sexy stewardess when it happened, ROFBMAO! No, no that isn't a typo, it is 'Rolling On the Floor BONKING My Ass Off.' ;) It is a joke. You see, even in the afterlife, it is important to keep one's sense of humour. So I am laughing at this droll thought, when my stomach gives a great gurgle, and I realize I am really very hungry indeed. So I look around the hangar for some sort of refrigerator or vending machine, and I see that it is not a hangar at all--it is a huge cavern with a finished floor, but the walls and the ceiling are all just carved out from the solid rock. It is as if the plane has crashed in the mountains of Trondheim at the Hall of the Mountain King. Or the Stockholm Subway, maybe. At the very top of this cavern is a bright green illumination, like a bank of electric lights hanging down, only I can see no ceiling or light fixtures, just an enormous rectangle of diffuse light with a dark negative shadow around the glow, just like the Phillips Ambilight Plasma TV in my SoHo loft. Only there is no remote. And no cellphone or even an iPod. So this is hell, I am thinking. And there is no way out from this place, either, because there are no doors or lifts or tunnels. But I do not know that yet, because it is while I am turning to look around for them, that my eyes see the most horrible thing of all.

Rows and rows and rows of temporary mortuary tables reaching away into the dark corners of that huge cavernous room. Hundreds, perhaps a few thousand of these, and every one of them with a pale cold body lying on it, covered by a transparent piece of that blue plastic sheeting. I have found all the other passengers from the airplane. And I know at once they are all dead. I am the only one alive.

I am standing very close to one of them. it is hard to see any features under the plastic sheet, but from under a corner peeks out a tress of bright, wavy red hair. Oh no, poor Strawberry, I think, and the tears come to my eyes. Because I am very sentimental, you see, it is perhaps my worst fault. She is dead--and has never known the love of a Likkanen...Blinded by tears, I take another few steps toward her corpse and then CRASH! I have walked into a stainless-steel trolley, very similar to the ones on board the plane. But on this trolley are no tiny drink bottles or soda cans or bags of salted nuts, which is too bad, since I am now very hungry; no, on this trolley are piled hundreds of paper tags with strings, of the sort one would use to tag luggage. And beside these are a bunch of Sharpie magic markers, so I can write the identification of the bodies of all these dead peeps on the tags and then tie them to their wrists. Or to their ankles or their other bits perhaps if they have lost their limbs in the crash. And on the very top shelf of this cart is a metal instrument case which I recognize from my youth, and on the lid of it is engraved my name, 'DONHO FREDERIK LIKKANEN'. My middle name, 'Frederik', is that of my 'morfar', my Swedish mother's father. This case contains surgical instruments, a set of scalpels and knives my father gave me as a present when I entered University (it was his wish that I become a pathologist), and as soon as I see it I begin to tremble and shake inside. This is stupid, I should be feeling calm instead, because the sudden appearance of this instrument case is proof that of course this is a dream, just a very vivid and realistic one. So I should not be scared at all. Soon I will wake up and everything will be OK, I tell myself, LOL.

But, whoa, hold on just a minute Donho, I can hear you saying. How come there are these two or three thousand dead passengers on this flight with you? That airplane was not a Jumbo Jet! It was not the Titanic, either. This makes no sense, dude--do the math!

Well, you see, that is why i am so afraid. Things are not quite 'adding up' for me either. The answer lies under the sheet. Under all the hundreds and hundreds of sheets. Like the Sharpies and the name-tags, the knives are there for a reason. I can sense that things are not as they seem. Very slowly and very cautiously, I come closer and closer to the table with Strawberry on it. My fingers are trembling like a leaf as i reach out and grasp the edge of the blue sheeting; beneath it her pale freckled face and body look 'Jelloed' and distorted, a bit like a naked body seen through a pebbled shower door. I peel back the plastic from her face. It is not the Strawberry.

I should have guessed this. The dead woman on the table with the brilliant red hair may not be the Strawberry, but I recognize her anyway. And much more more instantly and intimately. She is Stina Ekblad, a Swedish film actress, who has spent most of her career in Denmark, where she is the director of some sort of theatre. But she is really Finnish. We were children together. And naturally, we are former lovers. But, dude, what is going on? She was not on that flight. Next to her is another dead body under a sheet. I walk over to it and pull back the covering from its face--and again, recognition! This is 'Molly Hatchet', a very interesting and sexy young Filipina woman I met at a rest stop on the New Jersey Turnpike; I remember we bonked in the employee's lot while her baby napped in a large plastic carrier in the front seat. Asian babies are so much more tranquil and placid than American ones--I wonder why that is? Beside her was Heli, the third girl I ever bonked (when we were both 14) and the first I ever kissed. Next to her is a dental hygienist I never even made up a name for, and next to her is well, what you Americans would call a 'significant other', who is also now (though I do not yet know this) Finland's most popular 'MILF' mature pr0n star. And so on and on and on I go. No one from the crashed airplane is here at all (well, only one person, it turns out), just all of my former lovers--their naked dead corpses, anyway--laid out very neatly in long rows, like casualties on a battlefield. Only none of them are moving. For me this is not a bad thing at all, it is like a wonderful visit down 'Memory Lane'. Well, perhaps more like 'Lovers' Lane'. OK, OK, a combination of them both, then. If it is my mind's clever idea to make me feel ashamed at the sight of all these dead corpses, then forget about it! These are some of the loveliest women in the world, though of course, to be perfectly honest, they are not looking their best right at the moment. Under the green light most of them are a sort of sickening shade of white, but among them, of course are many who are not so white. There are brown ones and quite a few yellow ones and even a black one or two. Likkanen loves all of humanity--he has never discriminated. There has never been a racialist bone in my body. Of course, at my company I mostly hire white peeps professionally, because they are much better designers, especially the Swedes and the Finns. But this has nothing to do with race, this is just genetic.

Yes, yes, I am proud to have bonked and shagged senseless all these excellent babes! Likkanen is ashamed of nothing! Well, not exactly nothing, perhaps--on the next slab over from the Cricket (still a bit hairy, I decide, having taken a peek) lies my stalker, the one on the phone, the 'Babe With the Blade'. It is not totally, completely true that we have never met in the flesh. Actually we met and made hot steamy monkeys in New York some months before her first suicide attempt, but I didn't want to mention it, because she was only 15 at that time. I was being discreet. But I can have no secrets from you now, especially not inside this room. Is it really possible that I could have ever bonked so many women? Well, Georges Simenon, the French mystery writer, bonked many more than this, including his own daughter. And he kept count of them in a diary. Wilt Chamberlain, the American basketball player, bonked 10,000 babes! Of course he had a big round bed that rotated and mirrors everywhere. But I am Likkanen; I cannot suspend my aesthetics like that, not even for the sake of sex. Even handicapped in this way, I have certainly still shagged my share of beautiful babes, I realize, surveying the huge shadowy cavern. Giacomo Casanova only managed to bonk 122 women, scarcely a very great number at all. Ruben Oskar Jansson, or 'Auervaara', the famous Finnish thief and seducer, had less than 200. Don Juan Tenorio of Seville only 1,000. I have done much better than that! This thought is very erotic for me, and I think what a pity it is that these hotties cannot wake up--I have poked and prodded a few just to make sure, and they are really quite stiff and cold and dead--so that we could all have some nice lukewarm sex together. Not all at once, I mean, but it would be very pleasant to thaw out just one or two of them at a time, like Wolfgang Puck frozen entrees. And then refreeze them again, naturally, when I am done. Not exactly as nice as the glass dome fantasy, but I suppose we can't all choose how our Paradise will function. Of course, I realize with a faint sick feeling (how my belly is burning now with hunger), that might actually be too scary even for me, like in the film 'Dawn of the Dead.' What if they all woke up at once and attacked me like cannibals? Or worse yet, began to nag and reproach me? Much better they should just stay dead, IMHO.

Perhaps this last thought was not a very smart one, as you will soon see. I will explain why. Perhaps you are not familiar with the temperature inside underground caves and caverns, but although it is quite cold inside mine, it cannot ever freeze. The temperature will remain constant. This is true even for caves underneath the arctic tundra. So, even though it is almost chilly enough for me to see my breath, these bodies that are laid out here in such neat rows will not stay fresh forever. No, they will soon start to rot and decompose. I did not survive my second year in medical school, much to the anger of my father, but even I can detect it anyway; the fine, delicate Likkanen nose has already begun to smell the first sickly, sweet whiff of decay. This is bad enough, but far, far worse is this terrible burning pain inside my belly, this hunger that the sweet odour is causing. Because there are no vending machines in this place, no refrigerators filled with food, no cafeteria, not even any water to drink. There are only these dead bodies. And this is why I have been shaking and trembling this whole time, as if experiencing some secret earthquake of terror inside myself--because deep down I know that the medical case pull of surgical instruments is not for performing autopsies. No, no, the scalpels and the knives and the sharp bone cleaver are for cutting up meat. And now for the very first time I allow myself to fully notice the half-dozen or so metal objects dangling in the shadows beyond the very last row of my former lovers' corpses. Swinging very slightly back and forth and glinting green. The butcher's hooks.

Hands reach out and begin to clutch at me. They are clawing at me, pulling at me, tugging me, shaking me awake. Suddenly there is a face in front of mine, vast, unfocused, white but mottled with great orange freckles. It belongs to the Strawberry. On it is a contorted expression of tender concern, almost comical in its clumsy sincerity. We are aboard the airplane. It is morning; dim grey light leaks from the edges of the little plastic pull-down screen that blocks the window beside my right shoulder. I can feel the steady throb of the engines against it.

'Are you OK?' she says. 'You were screaming. Really loudly, actually.'

'Bad dream,' I manage to gasp, shaking off her hand and, I hope, her concern.

'We're over Sweden now, the captain told us. Just think, we'll be landing in another hour!'

Normally when I wake up next to a woman she looks much worse to me than she did the night before. But the Strawberry actually looks quite a lot better, and, still dazed by the horror of my recent experience, I make the foolish mistake of telling her this. 'Perhaps you have lost weight,' I add, and she flushes a dull red again. I have noticed she has a slightly different shade for each one of these blushings of hers, depending on its cause. Slowly the world returns itself back to normal. Of the Cricket, there is no sign this morning. Perhaps she has been heavily sedated. A little Finnish girl in yellow pajamas and pigtails stops in the aisle to stare at the Strawberry, who tries a few Finnish words on her. The child wildly claps her hands over her ears and runs away. The sexy stewardess stops to gossip and brings us boxes containing a little chocolate Moomin, which is a stupid cartoon character looking like a hippopotamus but with a little sketched-on mouth. It is also Finland's number four export to the world, just behind wood-pulp but ahead of designers. The Strawberry looks very hungrily and guiltily at hers but, perhaps because I have mentioned her weight, does not eat it and jams (you see? I am feeling better now) it instead back in its box, which is gaily painted all over with Moomin scenes. Why do women have these appetites? I suppose it is a good thing really for us men that they do, or they would never bother to bonk with us at all. Because now I will tell you the deepest, darkest, most important secret about women that Likkanen has ever learned during his whole life. It is this: no woman on earth truly likes to bonk. Yes, it is true! We men like the sex alone, especially those of us who are lucky enough to be Finnish. But it is not the sex women like very much at all, it is mostly the accessories.

Next time: The crock of gold.

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Don Juan in Helsinki: 7

At some time in the 1990s, I cannot say exactly when, all my friends lost their interest in making hot squishy gland-slapping monkey sex and began to make babies instead. Suddenly even the men gave up bonking and went around with plastic carts full of squirty rubber things and strapped plastic papooses on their shoulders so they could carry their babies around on their bellies. This was disgusting to me. Children are of no interest to Likkanen. In fact, to me there is something very wrong with a man who abandons all his interests in life and prefers the company of small children--it is not sexually normal. Of course, one cannot say this aloud, not in New York. My own father certainly did not behave in this manner, it is not Finnish. In fact, he barely spoke to me at all until I was grown up and in high school.

Of course, it is true that making babies is a natural and healthful thing for women to do for the good of humanity. Where else would more sexy and attractive women come from, if not from babies? But they are a boring subject for a normal person to think about! And what is even more boring than babies is baby pictures. These I cannot stand, especially the sonograms. When my friends hand them to me, I do not even pretend to admire them--I simply close my eyes and think of something nice, like bonking. And I feel exactly the same way about listening to other people's dreams. What in the world could be more boring than that? Because now, you see, I am about to be very boring indeed and tell you all about my dream that i had on this airline flight. I apologize to you in advance, but I must tell it now because it is very important to the story. But if you are like me and find other people's dreams of no possible interest, then I suggest you stop reading now and wait until my next blournal post to read any more--until then, perhaps you can think of bonking, too. In fact, if you are a young and sexually attractive woman, perhaps you would like to think of bonking with me. Or even if you are just a young woman. You can think of me as blonde, if you like.

So here is my dream, and it was a very bad one, the worst of my whole life, because at the time I did not think it was a dream at all. I thought it was all truly happening. I dreamed the plane really crashed, and this was so realistic that I was not entirely sure for some days that it was actually a dream. But when we reached Helsinki, there was nothing in the news about the Cricket's death, which would have been all over CNN, believe me, because she is so world-famous, and so this is how I knew. Plus I am blogging about it now, and I do not think that is possible from beyond the grave. Though in my opinion, most blog comments are so pointless and stupid they might as well be made by dead people, for all of their erotic interest to anyone. Perhaps someone should start a site with a Ouija Board.

OK, OK, Donho, you are saying now--quit your stalling and just get on with it! Just tell us your stupid dream, LOL! Well, I am stalling because it was so frightening for me that I don't want to ever think of it again. And I have a special reason for this; because it is what the shrinks call a 'recurring dream'. Yes, it's true, I've had this terrible nightmare again every night since then, so now I am too scared to go to sleep at all without drinking alcohol heavily first. Naturally, I can never truly get drunk. For a Finn, heavy drinking is exactly like the stages of grief. Or marriage. First comes denial, then bargaining, then perhaps a fist-fight or two or even smashing a bottle over someone's head, until at last the true Finn reaches the calm acceptance that is the most important spiritual element of achieving an unconscious stupor. We do not drink like the Swedes or the English do merely to fornicate and forget. No, no, for us, as in everything else, we make it into an art form. And it is true that perhaps I had drunk a bit too much vodka when I fell asleep on that airplane.

Because in my dream, when the engines died and the long fall and all the screams started, I could not wake up, no matter how hard I tried. I was fighting and straining just to open my eyes, and I could feel the Strawberry's hand grabbing so hard it was as if all the bones were about to break, but no luck. I could not wake up. And then my last thought, just before the plane hit the ground was, really, why bother? LOL! Not much point, eh? You know how they always say that in dreams where you are flying the only time you are crashing is when you are really dead? Well it is true! But by then we were obviously not above the water any more, because we were crashing into land--the Faroes, perhaps, or even Norway. Anyway, at the end of that long screaming ride down and down and down with the airplane shaking and shivering itself apart, when we hit there was only a terrible shock in my spine--and then...blackness. Nothing but blackness. I was dead in my own dream! Or perhaps I was just asleep.

When I woke up (woke up still inside the dream, I mean, not woke up back to the real world of bonking and blogging), everything was still very dark. My back hurt me, and i was sore all over. I was still lying strapped into my airline seat, but it felt fractured and broken apart beneath me, so I was lying back on top of it rather than sitting in it. Where was Strawberry? I could feel nothing beside me except papers or pillow stuffing, something soft, anyway. There was absolutely no sound around me, but I felt cold. Were my eyes open? I could not tell. As I checked this with my hand I could see a faint bluish glow up far ahead, perhaps where the cockpit should be. My eyes grew a bit more used to this, and I began to make out other dark shapes and lighter surfaces inside the cabin. There were a few other seats like mine strewed around in about three centimetres or so of pale debris--but no more passengers. I was all alone. The blue light grew stronger, so now it was as if I was underwater. What is this, Likkanen, I thought to myself. Huh? Are you drowned, dude? Have you become a merman perhaps? Because, you see, I noticed I was still breathing; in the cold, this made my lungs hurt. So next I thought, OK, am I actually dead? Well, it was a natural conclusion. One often wonders this waking up after a night of clubbing.

So next I'm thinking, follow the light, dude. That is what you are supposed to do in those Nova documentaries about Near Death Experiences, perhaps it is correct behaviour under the circumstances. So I painfully climb out of my seat and begin to stumble and crawl along through the cabin toward the light, which is now much bigger and brighter and glowing. Hey, I think, at least my legs are still working--and it is true, they are the legs of a true Finn, so sturdy and dependable. they have 'sisu', which if you don't know it is the great Finnish national quality. It means 'endurance or 'persistence'. It also means 'stubbornness' and 'stupidity'. I remember particularly being very proud of my legs and feet at that moment, because understandably this was a time of great trauma for them. It isn't every day one asks them to survive a plane crash.My excellent legs carried me along through the cabin and into the first-class section, which was empty except for a few seats and a twisted trolley. At the end of it, where the cockpit should be, was the light, softly swimming and shimmering like the surface of a pool under a thin skin of ice or blue creme brulee. Or Jello. Already I was beginning to feel hungry.

And then I had the strangest feeling. I thought that if i went through that blue Jello to the other side I wouldn't like what I found at all. Not one bit! But then I thought, OK, now you are just being stupid, Likkanen--if you are already dead, what could possibly be worse than this? So then I walked through it into the light. And that was how I discovered that there is always something worse ahead.

Next time: Jurgen's Cave.

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Don Juan in Helsinki: 6

I first met the Cricket at a party at another loft in the Village. At that time I was working part-time for 'Design Magazine' and so had a press pass, and as I recall it, I went there with my good friend, the rock journalist Lou Stathis, because either Blondie or Jerry Harrison of the Talking Heads had invited him, I cannot remember which. I had met Lou when he was writing a book about the Residents, who were a San Francisco musical group that nobody had ever actually seen in the flesh before, because they wore tuxedoes with huge eyeballs on their heads for their concerts, which I helped to design. The concert lighting, I mean, not the eyeballs. Nowadays, of course there are computer programs for this, just as there are to make the music. Honestly, I don't know why anyone bothers to work at all any more, perhaps we should just party all the time! Of course, for me, since I am Finnish, hard work is a primary drive. Anyhoo, suddenly I am dancing with this chick, Jiminy Cricket, and thinking, 'Bloody hell, what an exhausting person.' Or words to that effect. Then we are bonking back at my place, but again, it is not so good as in the taxicab. She is very demanding; one minute she is just lying there naked wanting to be adored and worshipped like a little girl, the next she is running around like a crazy jumping bean bossing everyone about. She was a thin little wiry monkey back in those days, with a hint of a pear shape, and though her breasts were really quite pretty, they were just a bit on the small side for professional purposes, I always thought. But the true reason I was not so much into her was this, and I am almost ashamed to say it. She was hairy. And as you must know, we Finns are famous for our love of healthful depilation.

Naturally, since I was not that much into her, she soon became quite crazy about me. The best way to deal with a person like this, I have discovered, is to send them off on many errands. So every time she showed up at the flat, I would make her take the subway across town to do my grocery shopping or deliver my laundry or a batch of photographs to Warner Brothers at Times Square. It was me who insisted that she start 'dance-aerobics' classes, which was a kind of exercise for women before the invention of weight training, so that perhaps we could do something abut that pear shape around the hips. But even so, I began to lose interest, particularly after she agreed to the threesomes. It's a sad thing, but you know, even in a really hot squishy sexy intimate threesome, there is always the 'odd one out' that the other two secretly cannot stand. Perhaps it was her voice. Nowadays she has quite a normal voice for a modern woman, you know, very flat and loud and harsh like the cawing of ravens in the forests of my native land. But in those days, it was a bit unusual, and at the time one desired the song of other, quieter birds of the sort to inspire beautiful music. Or, at least, sleep. Oddly, Cricket did not think of herself as a singer in those days at all, but rather as an actress and entertainer. I remember that we were sharing an unusual tender moment in bed together the night before I dumped her (I am a very sentimental person, it is my greatest fault), and she asked me for advice about her acting career. So I gave her the best advice I could ever give to a woman in the arts: 'Get a really expensive boob job.'

After I dumped her, of course, things were not so good between us any more. For one thing I suddenly saw a lot more of her--she was always hanging around in front of my loft on Water Street or ringing me on the telephone. In fact, she even tracked me down when I was visiting a famous architect friend in Westport, Connecticut, and kept ringing me there all night. It was very embarrassing to have to keep going to the phone, particularly because this was the wife-swapping party that was later used for an inspiration in that film 'The Ice Storm'. The idea that this happened in the '70s is just a movie fiction; in 1973, few married couples were of sufficient interest to swap. And they moved it from Westport to New Canaan in order not to offend the neighbours. Of course, I had to borrow someone else's wife to take there. As well as his car. But I will not say whose, because I am very discreet. I can tell you that it was not Sigourney Weaver, however--I wish! ROFLMAO! But of course, I have been to many such parties later in Hollywood, though these were not truly orgies, either, but were very exclusive and tasteful. And catered. One simply did not find that in Westport, Connecticut, at least not on that night. All there was to eat there was coleslaw and cold chicken. And BTW, after that I never heard from Cricket again.

Until tonight, of course, on this flight to Helsinki. She is angry about something now and is berating one of her publicists, squaring her shoulders and gesturing with her arms like a swimmer or a tennis player, still very obviously ignoring me. But I can tell it is hard work for her. And suddenly a sad thought gets into my head--these arms of hers are angry and swinging around because they have no one inside them to hold. I have read that she is one of the world's wealthiest women now, what a sorrow and a pity I could not have loved her. Or at least married her. And if I had, I reflect, sipping on a cheap vodka served to me from an even more cheaply-designed tiny bottle, then I would be the father of those two children cowering away from her now. Well, the father of one of them at least, the older, bulemic one. Which is really all one can hope for from fatherhood these days, I suppose.

It is at about this time, according to my iPod, somewhere in the air between Gander and Rekjavik, that we first encounter turbulence. At the beginning this is little worse than a bumpy ride inside the reindeer sleigh of the greatest of Finland's exports to the world, more famous even than Nokia, Siinta Klaas. There is a clinking and rattling of plastic cups on their plastic trays, the blinking of lights, and the bonk bonk bonging of the warning bells. Suddenly the flight crew, looking very pale, is pushing the crashing trolleys out of the way, taking up the trash on the plastic trays and throwing it into Siinta's great big green garbage bag, hurrying the steerage passengers back to their seats and strapping them down, and even making Cricket shut up and go back to her lonely private first-class section. But they are not quite fast enough--all at once, we take an elevator ride straight down. There is a loud sort of general groan, and the Cricket's younger child begins to scream again. Containers and soda cans go flying about and crash down again. And this is just the first of much worse to come. The elevator goes up, the elevator goes down. In between, we are weightless, like astronauts. At one point my iPod has escaped itself from my pocket and hangs in front of me; then suddenly it smashes into my nose and the battery goes dead, along with most of the cabin lights. Now I must rely on my memories alone.

This is will be not the closest Likkanen has ever come to death at the hands of commercial travel. No, not at all. That was once on a flight from Sulawesi back to Bali when the engines on a much smaller plane simply stopped over a mountain. But that time there was a black nun from Goa inside the cabin with us, carrying a chicken in a plastic cage, so just as we dropped like a stone beneath the green mountaintops, only a few metres from the rocks, there was a miracle; the engine gave a polite little cough like a lady with a cigarette and choked back to life again. On this flight, however, there is no nun. Only Cricket. So the engines do not dare to stop completely, but they are working very hard indeed, shuddering and shaking the airplane with the effort to stay alive, switching off the air each time the elevator drops. And now, whenever the elevator comes back up again, so for some people does the not very digestible supper we have just eaten. Did you know that the word 'puke' originally comes from the Finnish? Yes, it's true. It is my nation's great contribution to party drinking and happy times everywhere, along with the word 'sauna'. First it is a little old lady in green leisure-wear, next an embarrassed teenage boy in a 'Radiohead' T-shirt, then a big balding businessman fellow in the seat directly behind us. Finally it is poor Strawberry's turn. Naturally, being a Finn, I am not affected by all this. I have the traditional belly of my people, which is shaped like a cast-iron stove. My stomach is like Las Vegas--what goes in there, stays in there. This is true for my bedroom, as well, LOL!

Now, it may surprise you to learn this, but women often vomit when they are around me. Whether this is because they feel they are able to trust my very great compassion and sensitivity or whether it is because I often meet them when they are already drunk at bars and parties at clubs, I do not know. Both, perhaps. But I always feel I can learn much of importance about a lover from the way she pukes, especially for the first time. There are the crazy 'Exorcist' girls who make loud demonic noises or miss the toilet bowl, the weepy drama queens who want oh so much sympathy and care, or the suicidally vain chicks in the 'spoon club' who disappear to do it after every meal or midnight snack. Or even cappucino. But Strawberry wasn't like any of these. She just put the bag on her face and bent over silently and trembled a bit. This moved me very deeply, in a fatherly sort of way, so I stroked her head gently like a dog's. So then, she reached over and grasped my hand very tightly and did not let go of it again almost for the rest of the flight.

Ok, I know what you are thinking now. 'Oh ho Donho,' you are saying to yourself, 'You think every chick in the world is into you, dude!' No, no, I would not want you to think that every woman everywhere automatically wants to have hot sex with me all the time, even when she is vomiting, though it must often seem so. Yes, it is true, and my manhood is huge enough for me to admit it: there are some women who have no interest in Likkanen. These are mostly blind and disabled lesbian ones, of course, ROFL! No, in all seriousness, I sometimes meet a perfectly ordinary lovely lady who does not want to bonk with me, and these are the ones I admire the most. These are oldfashioned romantic women who are faithful to only one man. My mother was one of these, she had no interest in any man except for my father her whole life. He was a very important man in Finland, a war hero and a physician, which was very difficult footsteps for me to follow inside, particularly since there have been no more wars since then. Historically, we Finns are very talented at killing people, and it is a pity that modern life makes this natural instinct so frustrating to deal with. I am speaking of war, of course, not of being a physician. It is much easier in that case. But I truly feel I have evolved beyond such things through my art. This will be my legacy, I think, if I should happen to die tonight--that I have changed the world a little bit better through more daring design of bathroom (and some kitchen) fixtures. And so I feel a sense of great peace in my soul, as the Strawberry moans quietly beside me in the dark. After all, since I am dying anyway, wouldn't it be better to get it all over and done with now? To be buried deep down in the cold ocean like some great sea-king from the age of myth, with the airplane for my coffin, and the three women from my past, my present, and perhaps my future, to serve me as sex-slaves in Paradise? (I speak of course of the Cricket from my past, the Strawberry from my present, and the sexy Finnish stewardess I have not mentioned yet, for the future. It is this stewardess who will tell me later that the Cricket's own jet, a luxurious refitted Boeing 727, had been grounded in New York due to tyre trouble, so she had bought out all the fares on this one and then, being in some sort of great hurry, insisted it be flown straight over a hurricane in the North Atlantic. And indeed, I now look out my cabin window straight down into the night and see the monstrous whirl of luminous clouds stretching away beneath us to every horizon, and in the centre, the calm, evil eye staring back up at me. OK, time to get out of these parentheses--how did I get trapped inside here, anyway? LOL!) Now I will tell you a great secret. Every night, before I fall asleep, I think of this little Paradise, which I fill with the three most attractive ladies I have seen all that day. And if I haven't actually gone outside or seen anyone sexy all day long, I think of the three hottest ladies I have seen on TV, even if it is just the Weather Channel or QVC. To me this Paradise is a bit like the space bubble in the film 'Slaughterhouse 5', with more garden and parkland. Perhaps more like those bubbles in the film 'Silent Running', then, but with many more pleasant places to bonk. Some sort of glass dome, anyway. I find this deeply erotic. And so, comforted and soothed by this sweet, familiar fantasy and the violent updraft from the hurricane winds below, I drift into a deep, deep sleep, the Strawberry's chubby freckled hand still sweating inside mine. And it is then that I have the worst nightmare of my whole life...

Next time: The opposite of pr0n.

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Don Juan in Helsinki: 5

Hey to all again, I am Donho Likkanen. Today I am trying to remember when I first moved to New York City. Was it 1980? 1981? It was before the Internet was invented, so I really have no clear memory. First I moved to Stockholm to study design, then to Paris. That was in 1976. So, perhaps I bought the loft in 1981? I have refinanced it so many times, there must surely be bank records somewhere. It was after that I first met Cricket and she began obsessively phoning me (there was no texting then) and following me around everywhere. I cannot blame her for this behaviour, of course. or for being boring at sex. Perhaps I should have kept a complete photographic record of it, though, like Jim Haynes.

Damn you, Donho, you are saying now, just who the devil is this Jim Haynes? Why do you keep introducing new people into this story all the time?? We are getting bloody confused! Stick to the old peeps, LOL! OK, here is a link showing Jim with some of his collection of famous people he has videotaped over the years having sex: http://www.ivyparis.com/blogger/2005/08/atelier-a2-rue-de-la-tombe-issoire.html . Or you can Google him at his own website. I knew him in Paris through a former lover I met outside the Thomas Cook's office in Paris, just down the street from L'Opera and American Express. This was an English girl with the most beautiful skin I had ever seen, just like fresh buttermilk. She was also very fair, almost like a Finnish girl in the whiteness of her hair, and had the large eyes, long nose and chinlessness that one often finds in large-breasted women. Why is that, I wonder? Well, whatever, her name was that of some sort of flower, 'Rose' or 'Violet' perhaps; you can see from all these details that I remember her very well indeed. In fact, she must have meant a lot to me, because I know I was feeling very vulnerable at that time in my life. My father, who was a retired physician in Helsinki, had just died and left me a nice inheritance of money.

I took it into my head to nickname this English girl 'Princess Michael of Kent' for two reasons. First, because she was tall and very fair just like the royal relation on the Monty Python Show sketch, and second, because 'Michael' is an easy name for any Finnish person to remember. 'The Adventures of Michael the Finn' is the most famous novel of our great national writer, Mika Waltari. But thirdly, because 'Princess' is a very romantic word in any language, and my feelings for her were very similar to falling in love. One afternoon after some fine hot squishy squirrel sex we were having, or perhaps in the middle of it, she said she had to go interview this fellow Jim Haynes, who was 'the most famous American in Paris'. He was professor of Sexual Strategies at the Sorbonne and the editor of 'Suck Magazine'; she showed me a book of his which on the cover had a photograph of his hairy naked bum humping some other person at an orgy. You will probably think I am very oldfashioned because I don't like orgies, but I admit it is the truth. To me, having hot naked kinky sex together is very intimate and magical indeed, like the harmony of an orchestral symphony, and should be like a sacred act between two or, at most, three people. Any more than that and you have chaos, with many conductors running around waving their batons and too many clashing instruments. It does not create beautiful music. I am a Finn, from the land of Sibelius and Eppu Normaali--I cannot appreciate any music that is not normally beautiful.

So I took a sort of prejudice against this fellow. And that was unfair, because he was really rather charming and friendly to us when we went to visit him. First he made the both of us sign his guest-book. Then he took Polaroid photographs of us with himself and made us autograph them on the back, 'in case we became famous someday'. He spoke with a strange American accent I found difficult to understand, a little like a Country-Western singer, and had a long droopy walrus moustache. Apparently he had spent his teen-aged years visiting brothels in Venezuela; he told me that he was only really comfortable living in a brothel because he didn't belief in 'sexual possessions'. He viewed himself a goodwill ambassador, bringing the social values and the political structure of the brothel to the bourgeoisie, and that French culture was the most sympathetic to his crusade. He would like to give an interview to us, but alas tonight he unexpectedly had to conduct an interview with a television reporter from Australia instead. In the meantime, we were welcome to have supper with his wife and his mistress, who we found in the kitchen. His wife was an older, chain-smoking, dark-haired woman whose name and nationality I never discovered, but his mistress, whose nickname was 'Gogo', was from Stockholm, and so was far more welcoming to people of her own age. The meal, however, was not a pleasant one. Throughout it was the sounds of hot squishy skin-smacking moaning groaning sex from upstairs. First came the creaking of the floorboards, then the squealing of the bed-springs, then the long sobbing screams of the Australian TV reporter lady. As these noises became louder and louder, the wife and the mistress, who up until that time had not spoken to each other or even seemed to notice that the other was in the same room, began to fidget and glare, grinding their teeth and clattering their food around. Finally, they both slammed down their forks and knives and lit cigarettes. Worst of all, however, was Princess Michael of Kent, who was now bright red with fury. 'What a sad old wanker!' she exclaimed and insisted that we leave before dessert. To be totally honest, his 'philosophy of the brothel' was very repellent to me. I have never paid for sex in my whole life! Except of course for the antibiotics.

Two days later my telephone rings. It is Gogo.

'Hey, what can I do you for?' I say.

'You must come over here right away!' she tells me. 'Your girlfriend is upstairs bonking with him now. And he's talking of moving her in.' Of course she said this in Swedish, so the words she was using were much nastier. Naturally when I got off the phone I was very upset, and my heart was racing. To be totally honest, I hadn't even realized it was there before, this emotion. You know how it is--when you are young, you cannot admit to feeling jealous, and when you are old, it is simply too late. So after I smashed up my flat a bit and had a dignified tantrum, I decided not to allow myself any feelings to get in the way of our relationship. After all, why should they anyway when sex is involved? In the end, I swallowed my manhood and went to many orgies at the 'House of Haynes' with Princess Michael of Kent that winter, though things were no longer quite so romantic between us.

Now you must know something important about me, I have never had a gay bone in my body. I do not discriminate against the gay blades, of course, that would be illegal, but I am no 'Tom of Finland' for sure, LOL! (http://www.tomoffinlandfoundation.org/foundation/N_Home.html) I am also excluded from incest or wife-swapping, which are the other two most famous types of sex in Finland, since I am an only child and have never married. In fact, I had to emigrate to pursue my career at all. When Jim Haynes saw I was no gay blade or bisexual, he stopped trying to get into my baby-blue thong 'cache-sex' (which is French for very brief underpants) and seemed happy for me to provide company for Gogo. But of course, the poor girl was of no interest to Likkanen. The whole time we would be bonking, we would have our thoughts other places, on the mattress on the other side of the floor, perhaps, or the bed in the next room. So we would stop making monkeys and just smoke cigarettes together. Filling the air with smoke and complaining was our revenge. One time, being very careful not to see what Princess Michael was doing with three disgusting university professors from Edinburgh on the day-bed near the window, I got up from orgying with Gogo to use the bathroom, but tripped on the carpet on the way out. Underneath it I noticed a strip of wiring, which I tracked to a closet on the landing. My background at university was in theatre, and later with stage design and lighting, hence I am expert in such things and could see at once that the whole house was wired for sound. Later I also discovered that certain rooms had hidden cameras and were connected to videotape recorders as well. When I asked Jim Haynes about this he was very honest with me. 'Oh yes,' he said, 'Often my friends and I enjoying watching movies of ourselves balling. It is a big turn-on, man.' (This was before the invention of the word 'dude'.) Then perhaps he noticed a look of a certain Nordic coolness on my face, because he gave me his most famous charming laugh and said, 'Don't worry, Donho, I'm not planning to blackmail you. For one thing, you are never going to be famous enough.' But he was wrong about that, of course.

Before I moved to New York I asked Gogo what was the secret of this man's success with women, because naturally, I was anxious to imitate it. 'I think it is because underneath all the cynical sex talk he is really like a lost little boy,' she told me. 'It touches a woman in her deepest feelings of motherhood, because unlike men, women have sensitive hearts and want to heal and nurture. He says he just wants sex, but that is because he has been hurt; deep down, I know I can change him. And also, you know, he owns his own home. In the world of the arts, that is very rare.' This was excellent advice, and once I moved to New York City, I was careful to do two things. First, I stayed lost most of the time. And second, I bought my own loft.

Next time: The Vomit Comet.

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Don Juan in Helsinki: 4

Oh ho Donho, you are probably saying to yourself now, so who the devil is this world-famous star anyway? Why are you being so shy about typing her name--and instead just telling us, 'Hey people, Google who is the most popular singing star in Finland?' Are you so afraid of her lawyers? Well, yes I am. But I will tell you honestly who she is anyway, because I have no secrets from you. Her name begins with an 'M' and has two 'a's in it. And many many years ago, when I first moved to New York and she was still in art school or drama school or whatever, it was she who was my stalker. Yes, it's true. The young chicks have always been into me, even in the '80s. At that time, of course, I could not remember her name very well--too few double vowels. But now that she is very famous, naturally it is much easier for me to remember it, like Sony or Xerox. I have no trouble with these. Even so, I think of her by the name I invented for her, which remains much more 'real' for me. In those days she was a much smaller person, but already she was becoming a very loud and bossy nag. So my name for her was 'Jiminy Cricket'.

The plane takes off. Now the Strawberry has a new topic: Cricket. By now, sensing that perhaps my audience on the Internet will also find the bizarre events of this day of some interest, I have begun to record her chattering on my iPod. So, above the roar of engines, a child's loud wailing, the tinkling and the tweetling of Gameboys and Blackberries, and an annoying ambient echo, one can hear the Strawberry asking me if I am a 'fan'? Have I ever seen Cricket 'perform, like in person?' I have to bite my tongue. I certainly have seen her perform in person for sure, LOL! The Strawberry has just been to her 'Confessions Tour' concert in Chicago, and is very excited by the thought that her idol is now just a few metres away behind the purple curtain that separates us from first class. I can tell she is not sure that I am young enough to have ever heard Cricket's slutty chirpings on the radio. Hah! I have a few 'Confessions' I could tell as well! But I am too much the old-fashioned gentleman to ever be indiscreet, as you can tell at once from this blournal.

Next she tells me all about herself, which is so boring that I forget everything she says almost the instant it leaves her mouth. She is or was at the University of Chicago, either studying or teaching, I cannot remember which, the Kalevala, the great national epic poem of Finland. That is why she is flying to Helsinki, in order to research the subject in detail, particularly its trochaic structural links to other great epics such as the Welsh Mabinogeon, the 'Chronicles of Narnia', and 'even the Bhagavad-Gita.' Did I know that Lithuanian, for example, was linguistically related to Sanskrit? Nope, didn't know, don't care (ever met a Lithuanian? I have--not pretty.) Face to face she does not look quite so Simon Pure. I don't remember such a direct, blue-eyed gaze on the face of her imaginary mother. Nor do I remember any silver cross hanging around her freckled throat. OMG, does this mean the Strawberry is an Xian? Will I spend the next nine hours hearing about Jesus?? Men always say they prefer their ladies not to have any inhibitions, and certainly that is true for all the kinky hot times in bed together when you want to explore every hole. But instead this Strawberry girl seems to have no inhibitions in her conversation, which is very irritating. She is making me feel squirmy in those kinky places now--and not in a good way.

'Why haven't you ever married?' she is asking me now, having established this important fact about me earlier. 'Are you gay?' This question is not asked in a challenging way but sympathetically. I hate sympathy.

'No, no,' I say, careful not to deny this too much. One must employ the New York 'metrosexual' tone when answering this question. 'I just never met the right lucky lady. In fact, only today I was wishing that perhaps I had a child after all. Well, not a child, exactly, I mean a grownup son or daughter like yourself. Now, of course, it is too late.' Naturally, what I mean is that I am dying, but she is not to know that.

'Why is it too late?'

'Well, to be totally honest, I have lost all interest in women.' Why was I telling her this? To warn her off? I guess I did not want any complications on this flight. I could not rejoin the 'mile-high club' inside a business-class toilet cubicle even if I was crazy enough to want to. But now she is looking at me with even more of a pitying vibration. Ugh! : (

'There are pills for that, you know.'

'Yes, I know. But why would I want to drug myself in order to do something I no longer wish to do? I would never think of drugging a woman in order to have sex, so why should I treat my own body like that of a farm animal? It is the existential desire for women I no longer feel. I am not impotent, you know; I wake up every morning with a healthful erection!' On the recording, this last bit is surprisingly loud. In general, I am surprised and a little allergic to the sound of my own voice. I sound like a grumpy old man. Perhaps it is only the effect this silly, fleshy, clumsy young woman is having on me. But perhaps it's just as well the live podcast was a failure.

'You might want to if you really loved someone,' she is saying now, her face flaming all over with blushes.

'Well, I don't.'

'Poor you,' she replies after a few moments. Oddly, I don't remember at all hearing her say this at the time, but it is quite clear later on the iPod recording.

OK, now in the background there is a loud crashing and thumping. Even though it is still broad daylight, the flight stewards and stewardesses (a word which I have always loved more than any other, perhaps) are performing their ballet in the galleys, opening drawers, slamming drawers shut, clinking glasses, clashing cutlery, and microwaving the frozen slabs of food we have taken aboard at the airport. Then they will wheel them out to us on their surgical-looking stainless-steel trolleys. It has been so long since I have flown this class that I have forgotten how dreadful the food is, especially when it is catered on this side of the Atlantic. And, as Woody Allen would say, such small portions, too, ROFL! To make matters even worse, Cricket's entourage in the front rows are served the first class menu, which we all must smell and stare at in envy, though her personal chefs have disappeared forward to prepare her own private meal. Halfway through the meal, there is a great trembling and shaking of the purple first-class safety curtain, and then after some moments, out pops a person who looks just like a puppet in a Punch and Judy show. It is Cricket. She has become too bored and restless to enjoy her solitude in the first-class section any longer and has come back to visit her children and confer with her underlings. At once the smaller child begins to whine and howl again, and the larger one is led off to the toilet. The nannies keep their heads bowed and are careful not to catch Cricket's eye; later I overhear that at Cricket's home no servants are allowed to look at her or speak to her unless she speaks to them first. She seems very restless; perhaps it is the hour she normally has a workout. She paces up and down the aisles like a caged tigress with striped blonde hair on her too-big puppet head, blocking the trolleys and pausing sometimes to smile stiffly or even banter with some lucky peasant, like the totally thrilled Strawberry. Several times she looks directly down, but pretends not to recognize me--and suddenly I realize, with the cosmical human empathy that the passing of time has blessed me with, that all those many years ago I must have hurt her very deeply indeed for her to still be so bitter now. I find this thought almost erotic. And she is still not a bad-looking babe, too, though to be honest, she is getting a bit old for me.

Oh oh, jet-lag--I must go drink now. I will tell you the rest of this story later.

Next time: The House of Haynes.

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Don Juan in Helsinki: 3

Total disaster...

Hey to all again, I am Donho Likkanen. My apologies to those of you who tuned in for my live podcast from the airplane, but for some reason I cannot comprehend, it didn't work. Probably it was one of these crazy new computer viruses. I recorded everything on my iPod, but then--nothing happened! At least I have a recording of that horrible flight, however, and I have transcribed some things from it into this blournal entry. Also, some peeps have emailed me to say that my corporate website is not working properly and that they are unable to order fixtures from it. This is a technical problem with Moen Japan. As soon as the cash-flow situation is sorted out, everything will be back to normal, have no fear! The world loves Likkanen!

But perhaps those three old ladies who are busy knitting our fates in their cave do not love me so much, at least not today : ( I speak of course of the 'Norns' of ancient Norse mythology. I could feel their magical knitting needles pricking into me with scorn the moment I arrived at the first-class lounge at John F. Kennedy International Airport, because at once the desk manager took me aside to speak confidentially in a hushed tone that was trembling with excitement. In my experience, this is always a signal for future trouble ahead. A very important celebrity, he said, had bought up all the seats in the first-class section of the airplane for the flght, including my own; would I mind very much to fly business coach class (this is what they now call 'tourist class', but at a variable rather than a fixed price) for free? I know from my own experience that they are entitled to do this, because if you are careful to actually read the fine print on your ticket agreement, an airline is entitled to do almost anything to you, really, including the disposal of your remains. My only alternative was to go home again and take a later flight, which would be the next day. This would have been the wise thing to do, as it turned out, but I was feeling lazy. So in this case, my tantrum was theatrical only rather than emotionally sincere, but at least it resulted in a free return fare as well. This celebrity, whoever they might be, was obviously paying a great deal of money indeed for them to be so generous.

Now you must know this about me, I love humanity, especially the female part, though I can no longer feel erotic desire for them any longer. Even so, I have a deep and passionate love and respect for all peoples everywhere. It is not my fault that I cannot stand the way most of them smell. This is a physical sensitivity (perhaps it echoes my deep spiritual sensitivity), and that is why I need the greater space and improved air flow around me offered by first class accommodation. It is not simply a shallow love of luxury for its own sake, though of course there is nothing wrong with that. It is a matter of health, for the nose is as delicate and important an organ as the heart or the liver and so should not be insulted. In addition, I cannot stand the oils and perfumes and colognes with which these bodily odours are masked. Some of these provoke an almost allergic reaction in me, and I cannot breathe. For a time I worked in Paris designing bottles for Guerlain, Givenchy and others, and I can assure you that most of these scents are made from the very same ingredients found in pesticides and chemical additives. Consequently, because I keep my own body so very clean and healthful, I never employ scented soaps or even use deodourant. When you are close to me, you are smelling the real Donho, his very essence--and it is this subtle pheremonal aura, I am sure, which has always made me so overpoweringly attractive to women.

And, of course, this flight was to be no different. Jammed ( ; ) !) next to me in business class is a tall, graceless young American woman who would never have been allowed into first class. She is of no interest to Likkanen. She smells so strongly of soapy bath oil that she instantly gives me a sinus headache. In profile, she resembles a former lover of mine, the owner of a 'Simon Pure' health food shop who, most unpleasantly, never shaved her legs. So often these days, I think I recognize a former lover, and then realize, hey, that chick is young enough to be her daughter! LOL! Naturally, the thought then flashes through my head that this girl might actually be her daughter, though she (the young version, that is) has bright red hair and is covered all over with livid freckles. Then I think, what if she is my daughter??? This, of course, is total insanity, in my experience every woman in the world is very quick to point at a father for her child, even when, as in my case, it is never the right one. But strangely, this thought, instead of disturbing me, makes me feel strangely at peace. It might be quite wonderful, I decide, to discover that one has a 'secret' daughter, especially since I have no one to leave my considerable fortune to. And in fact, for some years, my feelings for young women have been increasingly 'fatherly' anyway, since the moment we begin to have hot squishy gland-slapping monkey sex, I feel the need to instruct them, particularly about matters such as basic hygiene. I see now that sex has always really been a distraction from this sweet, innocent, noble human impulse to educate and mentor young girls. A 'red herring' I am thinking, as I glance again at my neighbor. Later she will introduce herself and tell me her name, something nasal and unpronounceable from the Midwest; I will refer to her instead from now in this 'blournal' on as 'The Strawberry.' Not that she will be with us long.

At this point in the story, we still have not moved from the tarmac for nearly an hour. We are waiting for the 'important celebrity' to arrive, along with all of his or her entourage. I am listening to chillout music on my iPod, the Strawberry is reading a Finnish phrasebook and shyly glancing over at me from time to time. I can tell she wants to talk. It is natural. Then the personal line to my Bluetooth rings, though I have smashed my business cell, a Sanyo, during my tantrum in the first class lounge. It is my stalker.

My stalker is a young woman I have never met in the flesh but have text messaged with online since she was still in high school. She should probably be in some institution for the criminally insane, but instead is pursuing her PhD in child psychology at a university in Boston. In the time I have known her she has attempted suicide twice and has been convicted for drugs, prostitution, and assault. I have had her under various restraining orders for years after she was found sleeping in the front doorway outside my loft building. I cannot tell you her real name (in fact, I cannot remember it), but online her nickname is 'QTAngel'.

'Daddy,' she is saying now into my Bluetooth (this is her private name for me), 'I have a knife.'

'Please stop calling me, angel,' I tell her. 'You know this is a violation of your parole.'

'But I've given him a name. Wanna guess what it is?'

'I dunno,' I say, sighing and catching the eye of the Strawberry, who is suddenly very interested indeed. 'Fred? Mr Sharpie?'

'His name is Donho,' she says. 'And I'm masturbating with him now.' That is when the pilot asks us to turn off all our cell phones, and I do so with relief. But with the girl in the next seat the ice is now broken, and I cannot get it back. It is like the spring thaw in the lake district of Lapland, I am suddenly flooded with her chatter. It is not that she is so very erotically attracted to me--yet. She is simply nervous about flying. What do I do? Where am I from? Is this my first visit to Finland? At last something happens to interrupt this; the very important celebrity finally arrives. But there is a further complication. This person does not want anyone else in first class at all, not even his or her own personal assistants, chefs, trainers, photographers, nannies, or two children, one of them sullen and appearing heavily drugged, the other one red in the face and screaming. So the first six rows of business class are asked to move back for this entourage to be seated, and now all of us are packed together at the rear of the airplane, like the steerage passengers on the Titanic. And as these poor creatures shuffle back, moving as if there are chains attached to their ankles, a rumour begins to sweep through the cabin, a single word that is the name of this very famous important person who has made our lives such a misery today. And for me, when I hear this name I also hear the laughter of the old ladies with their needles echoing in my ears. Because this is not the first time this particular person has made my life a misery.

Or anyone else's life a misery who has ears and cable TV. Or a radio. Or who has ever shopped in a mall. Or heard a car stereo playing on the street. So, basically anyone who has ever gone outdoors in the modern world...

Next time: My confessions tour.

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Don Juan in Helsinki: 2

Now there is something else you must know about me--I am terrible at remembering names. Especially if there are lots of consonants in them, because in Finnish we have mostly vowels. Yes, it is true! Finnish is the most vowelly of any Indo-European language. This has been a great problem for me in my professional life, because sometimes one is forced to actually meet with clients in person. For speaking to men there is a marvelous new invention, the word 'dude', when one cannot remember their stupid names. But for women it is more difficult. Obviously, one cannot call them 'dude', particularly if the two of you are having sweet hot squishy sex together at that moment. 'Lady' or 'babe' will not do any more, either, they are both too unfashionable these days. Even if there were an excellent generic term for women it would still be impossible to use it, because women simply require more personal attention than men. They are needier in this way. So I invent private nicknames for them to serve me as mnemonics. The name I invented for my former Japanese lover was 'Day-Glo Plastic Raincoat', because that was what she was wearing when I first met her. Not in a hotel bar, either, but on a public street in front of the Safeway. She stopped me to ask for directions, blushing and clutching her Fodor's guide. It was the blushing that I could not resist; in this I am quite the old-fashioned romantic guy! Of course, being a Finn, I do not blush, myself, I keep too well-tanned for that. For us tanning is not a cosmetic vanity; in a land without sunshine it is a commitment to a fit, healthful ideal of life. Many Finns like myself will even smoke in order to help keep fit and tan.

The problem for me in the flesh with Lady Day-Glo was this: I couldn't understand a word she said! Her English was actually quite good--and mine, as you have noticed is perfect, because I now think in no other language after all these years--but there is something strange about the way the human ear works. In English, Finnish and Japanese perhaps are somehow incompatible together, just as certain radio frequencies will 'jam' each other in the air (by the way, I have made a bet with a friend that I can work the word 'jam' into each entry of this blournal; so you see, now I have! :) But here is the strange thing; once she was back again home in Japan and we were text messaging on the Internet, I discovered much more of interest about her, since I didn't have to actually listen to her voice. For one thing, she was really quite sophisticated. She enjoyed the films of Tarkhovsky and Kaurismaaki and the books of one of my favorite novelists, Haruko Murakami. I belief she even mentioned him in bed once, but because of her accent I thought she was talking about 'Origami'. She was also a very important figure in the Japanese government; she was their expert on Korean and Chinese missile deployment, but in such a way that I, as a creative artist, could deeply respect and even find erotic. As she explained it to me, when she was growing up her older brother was very much into the hobby of building plastic military models, which he imported from all over the world, including such things as aircraft, tanks, and missiles. It was her duty to catalogue and keep separate all the little plastic parts of these for him, which were correct in every detail, even to their tiniest internal components and serial numbers. Thus as a child she acquired an extensive working knowledge of the rockets and missiles of every nation. Later, after the Soviet Union broke up, while she was still at university, she accompanied the government negotiator for the Kamchatka bases to Moscow as his 'secretary'; eventually, she became the head of his ministry department, which is quite an achievement for a woman in a country such as Japan. But you would never think it to look at her; to the naked eye Day-Glo seemed exactly like every other Japanese woman, perhaps even more so.

So I decided that, at long last, this might be the lady for me. Foolishly, this led me to break a long-standing private rule of mine in regard to relationships with women: no 'home-and-away' return engagements! It is exactly the same situation as in an international football match--if Turkey, for example, comes to play in your country at your stadium in front of your fans, then you will likely defeat them quite easily. But if you actually are foolish enough to go to Turkey to play, then they will insult you, bribe the referee, tear up the pitch, and you will be lucky to escape home again with your life! But at the time this did not occur to me, because the Japanese are such polite people. One would never expect such behavior from them. So it was with high hopes that I booked my flight from Honolulu to Tokyo on JAL. One of the many delightful reasons to fly first class is that the section is usually almost empty; not so on this flight, however. I was forced to sit next to a Japanese New Age synthesizer musician and composer who was on a solo world tour. I have forgotten his name, because it contained a lot of consonants, but he was really very successful, especially in all of Asia, where he would often sell out concerts in front of 100,000 fans, but here in America he could only get booked in the foyer of the Tower Records in LA. Anyhoo, this fellow was either terrified of flying or terrified of germs, I could never discover which one. Whatever the reason, he had covered himself completely in a huge plastic sheet of the sort that is used to protect dry-cleaning and had cello-taped the top of it around the little air-conditioning nipple in the ceiling overhead, so that he was completely encased. He then crouched inside it for the next ten hours or so like a dead insect, refusing all contact with the flight crew or anyone else, for that matter; from time to time he would eat a candy bar or sip from a bottle of Evian water he kept under the seat. Just before we landed that evening I saw him urinating into the empty bottle. And this man was not even so very famous--you can imagine what it is like to travel with a real celebrity!

I cannot describe Japan very well because it was raining. Lady Day-Glo lived in a house in the suburbs that was not even particularly Japanese-looking. In fact, it could have been any ranch-style bungalow in California; there were even rainbow decals in the windows. As a Finn, I am always particularly sensitive to personal architecture, just as I am tuned as if mystically to the many moods of women. The moment she greeted me at the door, I knew something was terribly wrong. It was as if she was a stranger. 'It is my mother,' she told me when I asked her about her coldness a few days later, after there still was no hot bonking between us. 'My brother did not want her, so she has come to live with me. I cannot bear to put her in a nursing home, so I really have no choice. But she is very old-fashioned--if you and I are to be together here, we must be married first.'

'Whoa!' I said. 'Married?' I had sincerely felt I might be ready for some form of committed relationship, at least by long-distance, but marriage? Whoa! Back off, baby. Way too much pressure, LOL! 'Why didn't you tell me this when we were together in Hawaii?'

'In Hawaii I was a much different person. I was on holiday.' She pronounced this as 'horriday'; for me, that was a 'horrid day' indeed, I can tell you!

But at least for me the trip was not a total waste of time. In Osaka I signed a strategic agreement with Moen Japan to license the 'Dohonjin' line of custom fixtures ('Dohon' is how the Japanese pronounce my name; they cannot say 'Donho'). This is the first of my designs ever to be mass-produced; I understand it is particularly popular with wealthy unmarried businessmen and lesbians, and has proved to be a very welcome addition to the Likkanen revenue stream! And on the flight home I was privileged to rejoin the 'mile-high club' with a very drunken Mexican lady celebrating a divorce, which I understand is still a noted event in her culture. She was not quite as young as I had first thought, but this was an overnight flight and so the lighting was flattering, especially in the toilet mirror. And besides, I was still feeling a bit hurt.

OK, I must go to bed now--truly.

Next: I will podcast live from my flight!

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