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.