My Only Book

“The Carrot Man” is the only fictional book I have ever written. But I have written a couple science fiction short stories.

I will publish them, here, as well!

This book was written back in 2016. I was living in the small town of “Östersund”, which is located in the northern part of Sweden.

I had recently split up with my ex.

Quality of Life

A series of rare and unfortunate events had “derailed” my life about a year ago. These events were mostly outside of my control.

Over the course of one single week, my quality of life went from a 9/10 – to a 2/10.

It is not necessary to discuss exactly what happened. I want to leave that in the past.

But before that point, my quality of life had never been below a 6/10. I was never in a big accident, I was never bullied in school, I always had lots of friends.

I was always happy.

It is enough to say that I was still recovering from this crash (I still am). After discovering a medication that helped me a lot, I became more productive.

So I started writing this book – as a project.

I managed to find some pictures from this apartment, which shall be included below!

This picture is taken from the apartment that I lived in:

Apartment Pictures

Here are some pictures from the filthy apartment that I lived in.

For the record: MY ROOM was CLEAN.

But dirt would find its way into my room through osmosis, I talk about that in the book.

Since I only rented one room, my roommate controlled the rest of the apartment.

Positive Response

I would classify this book as an:

1. Existential
2. Comedy
3. Drama

It did receive a fairly positive response. It got 3-5 star reviews on 5 different book blogs.

It also got a couple 4 or 5 star reviews from professional authors on Goodreads.

• Here is the Amazon link to the book.
• Here is the Goodreads page for the book.

This book has 40 ratings and 33 reviews on Goodreads. It now has an average of 2.98/5. I used to be around 3.5/5.

Someone read it, and REALLY did not like it, I guess!

A Troll

I actually had a troll write an essay with 122 POINTS about everything he HATED about the book. The essay was actually longer than the book itself.

Hilarious!

Too bad I couldn’t find it!

When I asked him about this “essay”, he turned around and lied, and said that “a friend” – had written it for him. 

He would not even admit to writing it, himself!

Human Vegetable

This book does not contain many characters.

You have the MAIN CHARACTER, who is the voice of the book, and you have THE ROOMMATE, which is “The Carrot Man”.

“The Carrot Man” is a reference to him being a living, human vegetable.

Cover Blurb

When a 30-year-old neurotic Swede moves into a filthy apartment — he gets the shock of a lifetime: his roommate is a carrot.

Not the kind you shred and put in a salad with peppers and onions. No, but a real life, living, human carrot — the saggy kind.

As his own depression spirals out of control, he starts hating his roommate for being everything he’s becoming.

Lazy.

Ugly.

Broke.

A human vegetable.

Dishes build up in the kitchen. The bathroom looks like a garbage dump. And the mailbox? Doesn’t even have his name on it!

And the cherry on top of the cake is that his roommate will not, under any circumstances whatsoever, take out the garbage.

This bothers him to no end and he develops elaborate plans to force his roommate to act. He fills up the garbage bag with smelly things and goes for “mini-vacations” to his ex’s house.

When even this fails he snaps — his roommate is about to become the last ingredient in a giant batch of carrot soup.

The PDF File

Here is the PDF file:

The Carrot Man

Here is The Book.

There are 17 Chapters.

Chapter 1: Through The Door

It smelled of old dust and store-bought pizza. I looked down, and besides my own feet, I saw two giant basketball sneakers the colour of a dead Michael Jackson. Sickly white, like the redneck cracker retard in that Catfish documentary.

I was home.

But I hadn’t seen my room yet. My future roommate came up to the door and just kind of stood there. Eventually, he waved his hand and said “Hi.” in a prepubescent voice, though he was almost 20.

I assessed the situation. This guy had the body of an overboiled carrot, the personality of a cardboard box, and the intelligence of a cucumber. If I hung around him for long, I’d turn into a zucchini.

I’m sure that in the eyes of his mother he was some combination of Superman and Captain America; but to everyone else, he was the reason abortion should be legal.

I did not know this at the time, but this guy was in hardcore vegetable mode and that was how he spent his life.

His thoughts were trash. 

His feelings were trash.

His body was made up of trash because that was all he ate.

If you made a movie about this guy’s life, it wouldn’t be called “Waterworld” because he seldom showered, but it would be called “Trashworld”.

His past, present, and future all sucked. It was written in stone by God himself.

***

But see the thing is — and I can personally vouch for this — you didn’t feel sorry for him. I call him “Anti-pity”. Because no matter how big your heart was you never felt sorry for this guy.

In the same way that you wouldn’t feel sorry for a black hole, a sack of potatoes, or James Joyce (whoever that was). 

People, in general, don’t feel sorry for voids, inanimate objects, or dead people. This guy was basically all three. Yeah. He really was. It’s true.

If he was stuck in a medieval torture chamber and I heard him scream, I might feel sorry for him, but I might also not. Even as I have that thought experiment in my head there is zero emotion. Even as I scan my emotions again to verify if that earlier statement was true, there is nothing. Even as I check this a third time, nothing. (I’m reading this again now for revision, still nothing.)

You know how if someone tells you “Don’t think about pink whales!” over and over, you start to think about them even if you try not to?

This guy is so unworthy of my empathy that he trumps even that effect.

***

The one thing that “might” have been good about Anti-pity, is that he had giant feet. Not proportional to his body at all and fairly flat. If a normal sized person, like me, stomped on that foot like they do in the UFC, it would break. Because he has the bone density of a 85-year-old Asian lady.

I don’t even need to test it and check the lab result, I just know. And I think that as you read this text, you will start to know a little bit too.

It comes creeping in on you like a hungry homeless man circling the bus stop for change.

***

I closed the door behind me and he gave me a tour of the apartment. It was a pretty big place.

The word “tour” might be a little extravagant. Like describing a standard Volvo from the 90’s like “the best car ever made”. What you foreigners don’t get is that in Sweden a Volvo is a standard car. There is nothing special about it. Like driving a Suzuki in Japan. People just register “car” and keep moving.

Every time he showed me a room he uttered a sound that represented that living space. Living room became “Liv-roo”. Bathroom became “Bath-roo”. The kitchen was silent.

Life lesson: If confronted with a task that requires more than zero effort, don’t bother.

Try murmuring “kitchen” under your breath. It isn’t possible, so he pulled back and let Father Time handle the issue. Father Time tends to solve things or at least not make them worse.

My room was also silent. I guess saying “Your room” was way too much to ask.

Life lesson: Don’t have unreasonable expectations.

I waited for him to speak, but he didn’t. So I had to sort of go “So this is where I’ll stay!” in a fake cheerful voice. Where he responded “Hm”. That “Hm” would be the most common word he ever used, and represented about 70% of his vocabulary.

***

My room was filthy. Just filthy. Did I mention it was filthy? Random items lay spread across the place, all topped with a layer of dust you could ski on.

The windows were covered by giant floor-to-ceiling curtains with green, red, and pink roses on them.

These people had no taste, no class. These people were barbarians who wouldn’t survive a day in nature. Weak genes prowling along the chapter of life through the miracle of civilization.

It was pathetic. The whole thing was pathetic.

***

What happened next will have you understand this guy on a new level. I hesitate to call him “man” because it implies something good on some level. This life form has not proven itself worthy of such lavish words.

This is definitely a “dude” or a “guy” and not a man. Also, if you’re trying to have sex in Sweden, fly this guy to the other side of the planet. Because he will shut your game down.

They should have a picture of this guy at the emergency clinic for people who overdose on Viagra. Suck 15 vials of blood out of your body or take a look at this guy. Your choice.

Anyway. In the middle of my room there was a guitar case. It kind of just sat there, all dusty and old and unwanted. There was something self-righteous about it.

Like the man who takes up two seats on the subway at rush hour. You’re not being mean, you’re just generally unwanted and taking up more space than you should.

As my eyes fell on that guitar case, I knew it posed a problem. This apartment was filled with things. I would have to store it in my room, or outsource the problem, and fill this apartment up with one more thing.

I couldn’t exactly push it into a corner and forget about it, could I? It wasn’t a baby guitar case. It was a fully-sized, giant old guitar case from the 70’s that took up a lot of space.

I chose my words carefully: 

“Would it be possible to put that somewhere else?”

And like a powerful mute warrior he stepped forward and swooped it up.

I will not lie. 

This blew my mind.

I gave myself a moment to recover. Everything seemed so far away. Time passed slowly. Tick-tock, tick-tock. For a couple minutes there, I handed over the reigns of life to Father Time.

Was I in shock? Hard to tell, because I didn’t think or feel anything at all. Was I infested with a brain parasite which ate up my active brain circuits? Is this how I react to pressure? To adversity? I “check out”?

I don’t know how long I stood there, or how long he stood there. Because we were both in vegetable mode and things are very slow and random in vegetable mode.

***

I do know that he picked up that guitar case and turned around and faced me. He was either an X-man and used a superpower on me, or his face stopped time.

The worst acne you have ever seen. 

The kind of face children run from.

The face that shortcuts all CGI in a horror movie.

Fake plastic cheese skin draped over a terrible bone structure. 

My belief in a higher power was sapped from my body, and I was left with a materialistic view of the world.

We are nothing more than the sum of our parts. We are nothing more than the sum of our parts. We are nothing more than the…

The mantra of materialism was hammering its way into my brain. It might seem irrational, unscientific, and utterly impossible; but in the minds of men, that face disproved God.

***

What happened after was more of a blur. I remember following him around the apartment as he was trying to get rid of the guitar case.

He bent his knees a couple times as he imagined placing the guitar case in a spot, but decided against it. He eventually placed it in front of an empty bookcase in the living room.

I remember wondering why he put it basically in the middle of the room. But he was extremely happy about getting rid of that guitar case. He really was.

***

After some time had passed, I observed it to see if it had moved. Just, you know, the way something moves if someone’s giant King Kong feet brushes against it once in a blue moon.

It hadn’t.

It was in the exact same place.

I leaned forward and eyed it with suspicion. Yep. That thing was self-righteous as hell.

Say what you want about Mister Carrot over here, but this human vegetable made that guitar case his bitch.

Chapter 2: Cleaning My Room

Now that the guitar case was gone I could focus on getting rid of all the worthless trash in my room. Because that’s what it was: worthless trash.

Even a pile of garbage can be inspiring. You know when you throw away hard stuff like furniture you go to that place that got everything?

Once there, you find an old tape recorder and a screwdriver and build a satellite radio like MacGyver. Well, this crap was so pointless that all my years with MacGyver didn’t do me any good.

I searched the apartment and found a closet filled to the breaking point with stuff. When I say “closet” I mean small room. When I say “breaking point” I mean up to my eyes.

Let’s just say there was a lot of stuff in there. And I threw all the stuff in my room on top of that stuff.

I didn’t care if it landed sideways or broke something beneath it. I didn’t care if the overall weight became too much for the stuff at the bottom. Didn’t care. In fact, the more it sounded like a “crack” when I threw it and not a “thud” — the better I felt. By the end of it, I felt awesome.

If you found a real bad person’s bike, and you punctured the wheel with your key, you’d feel the same way. Elevated. That’s the word.

Other people’s stuff takes a toll on you. It really does. It wears you down like a bitter nagging wife wears down her man of 30 years. But what did he do to deserve it? That’s the million dollar question.

I didn’t do anything to deserve this filth and this crap and paying my rent to inferior genes. The word “inferior” might imply that I think I’m Arnold Schwarzenegger. I don’t. I don’t think I’m Arnold Schwarzenegger.

I think that I’m a fairly talented individual that hit a rough patch in life, and he’s unworthy of even being a carbon-based life form.

If “carbon-based life” (let’s call it CBL), was the operating system of a bunch of chemical reactions humans call “life”, the PR-team would hate to see this guy running it. 

“Get this guy off the CBL! Get him off. Do it now!”

“On it, sir, this is our number one priority. He makes us look bad. It’s about damage control.”

“This other guy is writing a book about him. If it gets out, we are doomed, DOOMED!”

“Don’t worry, sir, I’m on it. No one will read it.”

I paid my rent to my roommate’s mum, who oversaw the apartment. It was her apartment. She didn’t own it, but she had rented it for 20 years or something like that.

She would come on these “surprise visits”, where she inspected the place. She would go right into the kitchen and be upset if it wasn’t clean. MY part of the kitchen was clean. HIS wasn’t.

Through some strange leap of low quality logic, it was my fault her son feared clean kitchens more than stage 4 brain cancer.

You can probably guesstimate just how much that pissed me off.

***

It took me two weeks to find the vacuum cleaner. It was a big, robust thing, the kind you find in factories. I checked the vacuum bag. About 20% full. Good.

I pressed the giant power button in the middle. Wow. That suck was real strong. My thoughts went to “Doofy” in Scary Movie who was always “cleaning his room” with his **** in the pipe.

Doofy, just like this guy, was never getting laid. It just wasn’t happening.

Doofy was a retard.

This guy was a carrot.

The similarities seemed to never end. When I think about it, they could be best friends and were probably soulmates.

You know the animated movies that have a horse and a squirrel go on an adventure together? They were like that, a horse and a squirrel gliding through life.

If I told you how I went about cleaning my room, you would be bored. Even watching someone clean is boring. When I lived with my dad in Stockholm, my grandma would come over and clean the place.

You had to watch what she was doing and commend everything she did. She wanted this continuous, low energy dialogue that went on for hours, and that is actually worse than doing it yourself.

After the first few times, my dad learned and fled the scene as she arrived.

“Where you going?” she’d say.

“Going out!” he’d answer.

So the next time she told him they’d do it together. But that is, again, worse than doing it yourself. So he said “no” and then she came anyway, and he fled the scene like expected.

Grandma don’t play games. Every time you meet up, she will talk about the last time she cleaned your place and how dirty it was. Even if it wasn’t very dirty. She will find some spot that was dirty and store that in her memory bank. Like inside the microwave or under the stove.

My entire family has this same experience, and some will not allow her to clean their place anymore, because of the hassle. And, you know, they are probably happier for it.

You let her clean your place to make her happy, but she thinks it’s the other way around.

It would not be incorrect to say that, when she cleans your place, she makes you her bitch. And nobody wants to be somebody else’s bitch.

Chapter 3: Taking Over The Kitchen

The next step was to take over the kitchen. “Take over” might be a little aggressive, so let’s go with “establishing a presence”. Or maybe something in between like “expanding the territory”.

This sounds very militaristic, I’m aware of that, but they hadn’t moved a single thing or made any space whatsoever. Not one dust particle had taken a detour because of me. That’s offensive.

***

I went into the kitchen and opened the cabinets. This was also a little offensive. It was all low grade pasta and flour mixes and basically nothing else.

It was all old. I wanted to check the dates, but I couldn’t do it, for I cared so little for these food items you cannot even imagine.

The mere thought of devoting my 20/20 eye to a crappy-ass packet of pasta from 2002, that the master of trash wouldn’t even eat, made me nauseous.

There were three shelves. I shoved his stuff out of the way, to the right, and took the left side. As I saw that space open up I felt a million times better.

I put my stuff in there. Tomato sauce, coconut milk, raisins, nuts and tea. I don’t drink tea but I know I should. I don’t drink coffee either, but I don’t feel bad about it, like with tea. That tea is guilt tripping the hell out of me.

Next stop was the fridge.

***

I don’t want to say anything about the fridge, except that there was nothing in it. Some butter, and old cheese, and a very old dried up tube of tomato puree.

One more thing. There were a bunch of fully expanded, empty plastic bags in his fridge. Who has fully expanded, empty plastic bags lying around taking up space in the fridge? Did I say they were fully expanded and empty?

I’ve never seen that before, and I’ve seen the insides of many fridges in my life. It bothered the shit out of me. But I let them be because they were on his shelves.

I took two shelves in the middle, and a third of the kitchen door. I didn’t even ask, I just did it. These people operated on such a low vibration, that if you asked something, you would probably get a bad answer.

Not even a negative answer. Just an answer that had so many stupid, unimportant, incorrect and negative implications that it made your head spin. It was better to leave these mouth-breathers alone.

If you’re taking a hike in the woods and see a pile of dog shit, don’t be grinding on that thing like it’s 1969, is what I’m saying. Let that shit be the master of its own universe.

***

The freezer was easy, a piece of cake. I took his stuff and put it in a different box. I cleared two boxes this way, and would probably take a third a couple weeks from now. My blueberries need breathing room.

Cabinet: Check.

Fridge: Check.

Freezer: Check.

I was winning.

Chapter 4: Anti-pity’s Diet

Anti-pity doesn’t cook. When I say he doesn’t cook food, I mean he really doesn’t cook food.

The most food he has ever cooked, and even this has only happened three times in five months, is putting some ready-made meatballs and french fries in the oven. That’s it.

He then lets that sit until it burns, and the smell of burnt food wakes him up from hibernation, and he goes and takes it out.

No, it’s not over. 

I don’t care what you think.

There’s more.

He didn’t even buy those meatballs and those french fries himself. He’s supposed to go to school and work evenings three-to-four times a week. Supposed to. He doesn’t. He has no money.

His dad takes him to the grocery store, shops with him, pays for it, and takes him home. And this guy barely unpacks the groceries. I don’t know if he does, I’ve never seen it. 

His dad doesn’t just buy the groceries for him and drop him off, no, he comes inside with him. At that point, I always go to my room, because that kitchen is too small for three people. 

Somehow, through the magical presence of his dad, the groceries get unpacked. Maybe it’s a father-and-son kind of thing and they get a kick out of it, I don’t know.

I would bond any day with my son over how hard he sucks.

***

His dad is a normal looking guy in his early fifties. He’s also a vegetarian.

One time, he was cooking pasta on the stove and burning some factory-made trans fat meatballs in the old spotted Teflon frying pan they have.

It was dry as hell and it was oozing smoke. That fan was working overdrive just to keep up.

“You don’t use a lot of fat, do you?” I said.

“Nah, you don’t need it,” he said confidently, and kept stirring.

I looked down at those meatballs again. Black. Not brown, not dark brown. But black as coal.

I walked into my room and shut the door.

***

Anti-pity’s diet plan will give you everything you ever wanted… if you only do the opposite.

Supermodel: Check.

Superman: Check.

I’m telling you, you can break records and swim oceans if you only do what this kid doesn’t. Here is a breakdown:

70%

70% are frozen meals his mum makes for him. She lives in Gothenburg, which is a 15-hour train ride from here. Once a month, she comes and stays over the weekend and makes a shitload of food and puts it in the freezer.

This dude wakes up around 4 PM, puts one of those badasses in the microwave for 15 minutes, and Voilá, a morning gourmet has presented itself. He really does wake up around 4 PM. School? Yeah right.

He always sleeps in the living room. Apparently, he cannot sleep in his bedroom. For about two weeks after I moved in, he did. But after that honeymoon phase was over, the sofa it was.

20%

20% are store-bought pizzas. Baked in the oven that hasn’t been cleaned in years. Bare minimum nine months, I haven’t exactly asked.

There is a lot of smoke and smell due to the burnt cheese and garlic powder on the oven floor. I can’t even use that oven because I don’t want my grilled brussels sprouts to taste like shitty old pizza.

10%

10% is his dad making pasta/meatballs (always those) or coming home with takeout pizza. On rare occasions, on birthdays or when somebody dies, they actually go to the restaurant and eat that same pizza. His dad picks him up, and drops him off, for a full 360 win in paradise.

Chapter 5: The Bathroom

Remember when he gave me that “tour” of the apartment? Of the “bath-roo”, the “liv-roo”, and the silent kitchen? 

I didn’t tell you about the bathroom then, did I? There was a reason for that. I knew it would take a whole chapter.

Yeah…

When he showed me his bathroom, there wasn’t the slightest hint of hesitation or embarrassment. When I say “slightest hint”, I sincerely do mean absolutely nothing.

Not a pause, not a cough, not a stutter step or anything else that would indicate discomfort in any way.

No, he showed me his stinky, moldy, pubic hair-infested bathroom like it was the Great Pyramid of Giza.

***

He didn’t do that, actually, I just wanted a great ending on that sentence.

He didn’t act like it was impressive, or wasn’t impressive. He acted like it was a completely neutral object that could invoke no emotion or thought whatsoever.

Sort of like a woodsman picking up a random rock in the forest and saying:

“This is a rock.”

Even boredom is an emotion. This guy didn’t even have that. If I didn’t know better, I’d think he was medicated. But I would never give him that excuse.

***

The first thing that hit you was the smell. 

The strong, sour, reeking smell of wet forgotten clothes. And lo and behold, the first thing you saw when you stepped into that bathroom was a giant man-sized pile of clothes to the right. Okay.

This is where I channeled every motivational speech I’ve ever heard into a single momentary fortification of the mind. It wasn’t verbal, it went beyond that. I channeled the spirit of overcoming adversity and riding sword-first into the smoldering sun.

I was a Vietnam soldier crawling my way through one of those long, dark, cramped tunnels of the Viet Cong.

I was a NAVY Seal storming into the dark caves of Afghanistan full of Talibans, suicide vests, and “Allah Akbars”.

I was going to heaven, maybe, but not before I cleaned the clogged-up sewage pipe beneath New York City the size of the Trans Siberian railway.

I was in a space suit, drifting through space, about to collide with an asteroid the size of Texas. I can do this. I am winning. Don’t be a bitch. JUST DO IT. Nike go fuck yourself.

As he flicked that switch and turned on the light, the entire bathroom opened up to you like a festering wound.

Filth of the like you have never seen.

It seemed to not be on the sink, bathroom stall, and bathtub. It seemed to go through it. That’s the best way to describe it. Not on but through.

It had the colour of old, worn out grey. It wasn’t plain grey. It was spotted, or patterned.

You know the Santa Claus factory where they paint a chessboard with checkered colours? It was like that, but the colour was filth.

Once the eyes got used to the dirt, you could see that behind it, was white porcelain. Hiding like some kind of Cinderella in a troll suit.

On the wall above the bathtub, clear flecks of mold. Black and green, I think, I’ve mostly blocked it out.

This is where he washed his hands.

This is where he brushed his teeth.

This is where he cleaned himself.

When I look back at it, this conversation pops up in my head:

“Where do you clean yourself, bro?” (me)

“I go to the dirtiest place on Earth, and do it there.” (him)

“How is that working out for you?”

“Mm.” (unintelligible murmur)

“What was that? Didn’t quite hear you there?”

“Mmm.” (turns back, walks away)

My opinion of him took a major hit. 

He landed somewhere in between cancer cell and cockroach.

Chapter 6: The Mailbox

I had lived here for about a week, and none of them had mentioned a single word of how I would go about putting my name on the mailbox. Not. One. Word.

I say “they” because Anti-pity lives here, his mum has the apartment (but doesn’t live here), and his dad (who used to live here) comes over twice a week with pizza to his son.

They were enabling their son to be a loser. Trust me, he would be in any family constellation, but they made it very easy for him. To sink into this vegetable state and be a loser full time.

To him, it really was a full time job. Because his whole life rotated around achieving that goal. He never did one thing that did not contribute to that dorito-finger couch potato lifestyle.

***

If this was something to be aspired, like in an alternative universe, or another dimension, he had made a lot of sacrifices to get here.

No social status, no money, no career, shit body, shit face, shit health, shit personality — in very general and broad terms — a shit life.

And about a million miles away from falling and landing on a pu**y.

I’m sorry. 

I don’t mean to offend you.

Actually, I’m not sorry and I did mean to offend you, just not in a major way. That’s why I put those stars in there.

I tend to not give a f*ck, but I am polite about it.

***

This guy had so few friends, that in the inverted reality matrix, he was The Great Gatsby.

He really was.

A myth. 

A legend. 

A God among mortals.

A young, rich, smart, successful and immensely popular young chap with the world at his two bare feet.

He was Usain Bolt on the 100 meter dash.

He was Kurt Cobain before Courtney Love killed him.

He was Michael Jackson before he became white.

He was Stephen King before he got hit by a car.

He was Steve Jobs before he got liver cancer.

He was Bill Gates before he gave away all his money.

He was Bill Cosby before he date raped 100 women.

He was Neil Armstrong about to take a piss on the moon.

In upside-down world, this guy is winning so hard it’s stupid.

I don’t mean to go dark on you, but if this guy found this book, read it, liked it, and then discovered it was about him.

If he killed himself because of it, he’d be buried in the ground and the Earth would spin slightly faster because of it.

If all that happened, it wouldn’t be the new holocaust, is what I’m saying.

If I was that guy, I would just smoke weed all the time and watch Avatar all day, and pretend that was the real world and this was the fake world presenting itself through a really bad movie.

This movie sucks! I hate the main character! He’s such a loser!

***

The mailbox in this particular edition of the movie didn’t have my name on it.

That had to change.

Big time.

Sometimes, you get important mail. It’s not like with this guy, that if he got his mail or not it didn’t matter. It’s not like that.

No, it could be a bill, a doctor’s appointment, something that you just cannot miss.

If this guy threw away his unopened letter in the garbage bag at home, or if the mailman threw it away in some other garbage bag — just didn’t matter.

I’m sorry.

But it doesn’t.

You can go: If the garbage man goes around throwing away letters in garbage bags outside, those are going to get full, now a banana peel will bounce off those letters and land on the street.

An old woman is going to step on that banana peel, slip, break her back, and die right there on the street like some animal who just got shot in the back.

No.

That’s wrong.

You can bring me this lady in a bag, an X-ray of her back, and surveillance footage of her stepping on the banana peel, falling over and dying like some squirrel who just became roadkill.

Wouldn’t change anything.

Some things just are.

This is one of those things.

***

I had a pen.

I had paper.

But no tape.

I searched through that entire apartment like I had the devil on my back and my ass was on fire. That’s how it felt.

I went through every cabinet, every drawer, every space I could find. Nothing. No tape.

Do you know how uncool you must be to live in an apartment for an extended period of time, have no tape, and pretend like everything is good?

You have to be fake.

You have to be lazy.

You have to be a lot of things.

When I get mad I get tunnel vision. I went through every place where that tape should have been one more time. 

Nope.

No tape.

What kind of bullshit apartment is this?! It’s tape!

I put my elbows on the table and rested for a bit. I went through the entire apartment, very slowly, one more time. Still nothing.

The devil on my back, the fire in my asshole, and me were merging. I went through the apartment one… last… time. 

Nothing.

I was ready to kill someone.

***

The fact that these people didn’t have any kind of tape at home whatsoever, made me dislike them even more. 

It made sense.

It made a lot of sense.

I had to go downtown.

Chapter 7: Going Downtown

This is not New York. Los Angeles. Or Tokyo.

This is the small town of ÖSTERSUND in the province of JÄMTLAND in northern SWEDEN. Some say middle, look at a map and so shall you see.

Jämtland is directly connected to Norway, so we get some of their joy and oil through sheer osmosis. If you don’t know what osmosis is, it’s the thing that makes things spread, like religion.

The nature around Östersund is stunning. Now, I hate that word, because it is fake, so let’s say beautiful.

A giant river runs straight through the heart of Östersund. This river is so big, that the fish think they’re in the Atlantic Ocean.

It takes five full minutes to walk across this river on a bridge. You cannot bike across this bridge in less than 60 seconds, no matter how fast you go. If you’re Lance Armstrong, and you only got one ball, that’s a little less weight to carry, but still. Can’t do it.

Dwarfs can barely get across it. I saw a dwarf “walk” across it once, and it wasn’t pretty. I say “walk” ‘cause, you know, they move more sideways than forward. 

I still don’t know if that child-sized man made it across. I almost called child protective services on his ass.

***

The weather is dynamic. It changes very fast.

I think it’s because we’re surrounded by hills, because it was the same when I lived in Edmonton near The Rocky Mountains. A 17 hour bus ride, but still, I see a correlation.

Point is, you’d think this ever-changing weather would create some interesting people. Na. The people of Östersund are mostly farmers and physical labourers and all the smart ones fled to the city. You don’t need to be Einstein to run a farm, you need stability and energy.

No matter what your preconceptions were, know that Östersund is a low energy town of 50 000 people.

Beautiful nature. 

Dynamic weather. 

Boring people. 

These are the must-knows of Östersund.

***

There is one other thing. 

Östersund is the Scandinavian capital of the homeless and the retards. It’s not official, I don’t think, but the numbers speak for themselves.

You cannot turn a corner in downtown Östersund without seeing one. They are all downtown.

The handicapped retards get apartments for their low potential constitution, and there they stay.

The homeless alcoholics definitely don’t get apartments, I think they hang out where the action is.

I have nothing against gross people, as long as they don’t take up my entire visual field. These wheelchairs and drooling mother*uckers tend to do that. There’s a star in there, so don’t get offended.

***

There is no place they will not go; the library, the bookshop, the cinema — there are no safe zones anymore. They might not understand the book called “ABC” in the children’s section, but they will go there and they will read Stephen King’s latest book in front of you, just to show you they can.

They can’t, and their assistant knows that. Still, they have endless emotional support from the people that work for them. They can fire them at anytime.

This behaviour is sort of endorsed by the government because they all got expensive apartments in the most attractive part of Östersund. Point blank downtown.

And if you are so retarded you cannot function on your own, you get to stay in one of these halfway houses for retards, which are all, you guessed it, downtown.

***

I went to my bus stop REMONTHAGEN and put my skinny ass on a yellow diesel bus.

When I was in school we got one pencil every semester. One. We’d peer through the window of the special class and they got one teacher per student, TVs, radios, games and more stuff I can’t remember now because it was 20 years ago.

I still think about that as I step off the bus and take a jab to the face.

A short, hunchback woman is walking awkwardly. One eye is closed and the other one is extremely red. Her face is hanging to her chest which itself is hanging to her knees.

Keep moving. Don’t slow down. That’s how they get you.

I look up and see a regular dude. Now that’s what a regular dude looks like, I think to myself. Average height, weight, size. His clothes were whole and clean and matched by his shoes. He looked like a low-end businessman.

I know this guy. He’s so obvious.

There was something about his face. Apprehension? Tension? There was something there, but I couldn’t say what. Every other second or so, a twinge.

I looked down. Was he limping? No, maybe, yes. If you looked directly at his left leg, you saw that he was dragging it behind him, like a pillar of concrete.

This guy was turning on me. I didn’t know where I had him.

You know that scene in Men In Black when this average Joe farmer turns out to be a gigantic, monstrous, people-swallowing alien?

It was like that. If this was his best self, I didn’t want to see his other selves.

I hit the panic button, shut down, and went into fail-safe survival mode. I was in my panic room. Nothing could get me here.

I peered out at the world through a tiny window. I didn’t have tunnel vision, I had tiny slit vision. I saw just enough not to steamroll the old lady in front of me.

I made my way to the department store. My blood sugar was dropping, and I was slipping into a coma. Survival mode is good that way, it uses little energy and keeps only the basic stuff going.

I fumbled around the store for ten very long minutes. 

I asked an employee for directions. Got them. Followed them. Nothing. Asked another one. Got new directions. Went to a new place. Nothing. On the third or fourth attempt I struck gold. There it was. Yellow tape.

The checkout line was simply too long. But I had no energy left, so I just stood there and took it up the ass like a good citizen. The most amount of fingers I ever had in my ass was five. Well, this retail-dick beat those by a long shot.

I was a complete cabbage head by this point, so I didn’t even care. The power of my deadpan stare was off the charts. Off the charts. If you made a chart that specifically showed the power of my deadpan stare on a scale of 1 to 10, it wouldn’t be on that chart.

Once through, I had to sit down and rest on a wooden pallet for a while. Maybe it was seven minutes. Maybe it was twelve. I then stood up, walked that 90 second stretch to the bus stop, and took the bus home.

***

I collapsed on my bed like an empty sack of potatoes. The tape was still in the plastic bag on the kitchen table, that’s how little I cared. The hours went by.

After 5 hours my fatigue went from “dangerous” to “extreme”.

After 10 hours it went from “extreme” to “pretty bad”.

After 15 hours it went from “pretty bad” to “moderate”, though still a pain in the ass.

And after 20 goddamn hours I felt like a normal human being again.

It was at the beginning of the 25th hour that I punched the clock as the proud survivor of “Retarded Person Induced Trauma”.

It was going to take more than a bad case of RPIT and a couple zombie-tards to take me out.

Chapter 8: A Random Dream

I had a horrible nightmare last night. I’m writing this down, because it’s 1:09 AM and I’m about to sleep again.

I was a part of the resistance in some kind of George Orwell 1984 society. I was at the top floor in a tall skyscraper, with the walls torn off from large tank shots.

But it stood strong and was not about to collapse into its own footprint at free fall speed with zero resistance like building 7 did at 9/11. I didn’t even think about that and I wasn’t about to call 911 or anything.

A man picked up a gun and shot me twice in the chest. Once in each lung, and I felt the air go out, like when you pop a balloon. I fell onto my stomach and died. But it was a slow death and I had to wait for it. It was very awkward.

And after a while I realized I wasn’t dead, just very, very hurt. The problem was: they were still in the room and thought I was dead. So I had to take extremely shallow breaths that made no sound at all.

This led to oxygen deficiency, which led to panic. I was battling this panic while being unable to breathe. I had an out-of-body experience in the dream and watched my long skinny back go up and down. It moved too much, so I breathed even less. The anxiety and panic was really something.

At this time I woke up, and I was on my stomach in my bed, with my arms crossed over my chest, making it impossible to breathe. I had created my own straitjacket. I felt like shit and my chest was under so much pressure.

I moved to my back, and let that chest roam free, like a gay AIDS dick in the 70’s. Sorry about that, it just came to me.

My killers were gone and a tall, white, beautiful woman with a big round ass was there. She was naked and her ass was facing me, in all it’s oiled up static glory.

I went to town on that ass, gripping the meat with my hands, pulling it into me as another part of me pushed it away. The view was great, because the wall was torn off. A cloud drifted into my mouth… I could taste it.

Not really, though. A cloud did not drift into my mouth. It was an office building, not a castle in the sky. Don’t try pretend that dream was significant — it wasn’t. It was just a random dream that came to me.

Are people allowed to have random experiences these days? Or must the firing of EVERY neuron in that ball of fat we call “brain” be of life-shattering proportions?

That’s what kills me about hippies. They wake up Sunday morning and take a shit, and now they just had a conversation with God.

They want to cast this epic shadow over everything they’re doing. They aren’t just trying to kick a weed addiction, no, they are in a direct confrontation with the God of Pleasure.

They can’t just walk in nature and enjoy the view, no, there’s alien technology hidden in those stones over there.

They can’t be an unimportant person in the larger scheme of things, no, FBI, NSA, and Department of Homeland Security is tailing their ass and bugging their phones.

Now we’ve crossed over into paranoia, but it’s all part of this need to cast yourself as a hero in your own movie. It’s a form of narcissism that can get out of control if you have a bad grip on reality.

Chapter 9: Securing The Area

With that dream out of the way I was down to work.

I had established enough of a presence at home by now to venture outside. Time to see what this neighbourhood was made out of.

This neighbourhood could not be more average. Swedish middle class. Very boring but they are good citizens in every sense of the word.

Just so you know, 90% of Sweden is middle class. The answer wasn’t communism. The answer was to push everybody towards the middle class. Help the poor up with free education, good healthcare and all that. Push the rich down with inescapable taxes around 40%.

The result: the poor become lower middle class and the rich become upper middle class.

That leaves about 1000 filthy rich people and 10 000 broke fucks. Not a bad deal.

Plus, if you hate on the suits like a real communist, don’t pretend the smartphone would have been remotely okay without Steve Jobs. Terrible father, brilliant business leader.

***

The Swedish model works. Every single country in Scandinavia is proof of that. Sweden, Norway, Finland, Denmark, Iceland.

Finland is pretty Russian and has rampant alcoholism. That country works about 1500 times better than Namibia, okay? The Danish party hard and drink a lot of booze and smoke.

They don’t have that German “Work first, then play” attitude. Their attitude is “Play hard for as long as you can, then work if I happen to feel like it”. That country is still top 10 in the world. So is Finland. That’s how powerful the Swedish model is.

It really is mind-boggling that the rest of the world isn’t trying to be more like Sweden. The only reason we have more crime than Japan is because of immigration. Japan took 28 refugees 2016, and didn’t give them shit. No money, no food, no housing, nothing.

Sweden takes 100 000 and tries to give them a decent life. It’s not easy. But for some reason, Sweden and Germany take on the problems of the world.

The refugees aren’t vegetables like Anti-pity, but compared to even an average Swede, they are barbarians.

No housing, no schooling, civil war and massive incest don’t tend to create the next renaissance, if you know what I’m saying? The incest is very geographical, and country-specific.

If you don’t marry your blood related cousin in Pakistan, you are disowned and publicly whipped.

If your sister is on her knees doing laundry, and you don’t throw that dick in her mouth, you are pretty much committing a crime in Pakistan.

Not breeding with family members is a serious offense, and is treated as such. Public whipping, prison, death.

Not having an open, publicly known sexual relationship with a close family member is very suspect in Pakistan. They can’t trust you now, they don’t know where they have you. You have to show them you are on their side.

Sis, get over here! Do this thing for daddy… I mean brother… or let’s be honest I meant both.

***

I have walked this neighbourhood so many times, and not once has anything interesting happened.

Not once.

You have to give me SOMETHING; an argument, a fist fight, a car crash with zero injuries, even an unimportant displaced object would be fine. Then you could at least wonder how it got there, and what the backstory was.

And if I can’t have any of those things, give me the remnants of one of those things. An uprooted mailbox would make my week. Even a car with a dent on it, would be exhilarating.

I don’t expect David Copperfield to disappear the Statue of Liberty, is what I’m saying.

***

When I lived in downtown Edmonton, I heard ambulances all the time. All the time. Now, I live five minutes from the only hospital in this part of Sweden, a major hospital, and I’ve never heard an ambulance.

How is that possible? If I didn’t know better, I’d think the ambulances were silent in Sweden.

This place is so safe it makes me want to punch someone.

Chapter 10: The Kitchen

I might already have mentioned that I “took over” the kitchen a while back. As amazing as that sounds, it wasn’t all that amazing.

Anti-pity is the kind of dog that loses all play fights, says “yes” to a real fight, and loses that fight, too. He always loses the fight, but he’s too dumb and lazy to do anything about it, other than rely on his terrible memory to forget.

Anti-pity’s coping mechanism is to lie down on the couch, play video games, eat pizza, drift off to sleep, wake up, and redo the whole thing over again. Rinse and repeat. And then you die. That’s his life. I just summarized his whole legacy in a single paragraph, and it wasn’t even hard.

My point is the following: even if I “took over” the kitchen per se, even if I pushed my weight around and showed dominance like an alpha chimp, Anti-pity is not capable of absorbing that information and adjusting. He just keeps doing exactly what he has been doing. Am I getting my point across?

This simple fact led to a series of problems down the road. It did not matter what happened. He would not clean that kitchen.

***

One time, when his dishes had been lying around for weeks… it got moldy. 

I didn’t know how to address it, but I told him. Very politely. A sort of “You can do it whenever you happen to feel like it, no rush, no worries” kind of comment. I think we all know exactly what kind of comment that is.

It is filled with positive energy the way a good steak is filled with fat. But that cow grew up in torture chamber. Behind that comment is a smiley face, and behind that face is disdain.

Three hours after my overly polite hate-to-bother-you comment, he went into the kitchen, picked out the moldy dishes, put them in the washing machine, and left absolutely everything else.

I was in my room when heard a bunch of noises, and I felt a little smug that I made him clean the kitchen. I took his “kitchen cleaning virginity”, you could say.

I ran a totem-pole up his ass papa-chimp style. I am just writing crazy shit today. There is something wrong with my sinuses, I got a headache and a sore throat.

Let’s just say this: I was extremely happy about the fact that he expended energy to move his own dishes around. Did I just invent the quantum computer? That’s how I felt.

Then, something happened.

Or maybe it was what didn’t happen.

I walked into the kitchen to find that he had only cleaned the moldy dishes, and left everything else. I froze midstride, and stood completely still to make sure my observation was correct. It was correct.

Right at that second, my loathing of him took a new form, reached a new height, changed its energetic potential from moving chairs to mountains.

If you followed the trajectory, 27 seconds from now, I would be the first person in history to make Mount Everest my bitch.

I cannot accurately describe the mental process that took place in my head that day.

If one of those Precogs (psychic mutants) from Minority Report peered into my brain that night, Tom Cruise would haul my ass to prison for “Future Murder”.

And he would be right.

***

That kitchen was always dirty, always filthy. Even after I cleaned it, including his stuff, he would come in and put some of his old butter on his old bread, and leave dry-ass bread crumbs all over the goddam place.

I had a space on the counter that I kept clean, that I kept to myself. He would take his butter knife, with a bunch of butter on it, and leave it in the middle of that space. Slabs of butter. In your face.

Try cleaning up butter if you don’t have paper towels at home,  it’s not exactly a vacation to Ibiza. 

It’s all slimy and it doesn’t stick to the rag, but, ironically, it does stick when you try wash it off with water. So you have to use your hands. Slabs of butter. On your hands.

***

This guy has some bad moves in the kitchen, let me tell you.

He would dump all the food he never ate in the kitchen sink. The kitchen sink was a magical portal that disappeared all kinds of food every time his father came over to visit, or when his roommate (me) got really mad and cleaned it.

Try hand washing dishes. That water has no place to go. I don’t mean to be dramatic. But that’s what it was.

Chapter 11: Brushing My Teeth

The apartment had two bathrooms. The big one that he used, and the small one that I used.

I could not brush my teeth in his bathroom, because it was full of mold. And I could not do it in mine, because the sink was broken. It leaked. So, unless I wanted an impromptu foot bath right there on the bathroom floor… there was only one place left.

The kitchen.

But to stare down a grey-brown pit of wet, smelly, rotting, decomposed foods while brushing your teeth isn’t the kind of experience that makes you want to have grandkids.

If Satan had an asshole, that’s what it would look like. And the close vicinity of that brown ring of death didn’t make me any more gay.

Chapter 12: Washing My Hands

I’m on the toilet in my bathroom where you can’t sit without getting T-boned from the right by the sink. Let me explain. They crammed a bathroom into a closet.

Like, sometimes, God takes a fully grown person and crams it into the body of a tiny dwarf. They walk funny, they talk weird, the body parts are all out of proportion. Nothing fits together.

It’s not just a small person. It’s what would happen if you gave a two-year-old access to human lego. They would build strangely shaped humans to the left and right, put together seemingly at random.

A long leg here, a short arm here. Giant head, athletics that make Olympic athletes explode upon sight out of sheer contrast. Nothing is working, and you don’t have to be bright to see it.

The driver’s license for these people is a Nobel Prize in physics. If they jump into a pool and don’t sink they get another prize in chemistry. And if they make it to the other side of the pool — oh man! — they just won Olympic gold in swimming.

It’s true. It’s crazy how unathletic these people are and how much normal people admire them. The bar is set so low, that whatever these people do they get applause and appreciation. They pick up a shotgun and shoot an old bird out of the sky… and now they’re this epic dragon hunter.

But you can’t hate on the dwarf in Game of Thrones, he is seriously amazing. That’s how I know you’re a dwarf racist, if you’re so biased against dwarfs you can’t even like that guy. I love that guy. He got swagger.

How cool would he have been if he was just a little bit taller? Those are the questions that haunts him at night, you just know it.

Back to the bathroom, though. The sink is much too close to the bathroom stall, almost on top of it. So if you lean forward, which inevitably you do during a number two, your upper body will collide with the sink.

You then have two choices, sit straight as an arrow, or dive UNDER the sink, and then almost carry it on your back like a mule. I went under, as I always did, because I always lean forward in these situations.

Your chest is under so much pressure, because it’s driving your knees toward the ground. But the knees have nowhere to go, because the legs are in the way.

It feels like you’re in a straitjacket, size extra small.

Your arms are crossed over your chest, your legs are pinned to the ground, and your back sports a porcelain backpack that weighs a ton. You’re about to pass out. But if you do, goodbye self-respect.

How weak do you have to be to take a shit and lose?

“Bro, you just took a shit and LOST?”

“Shut up.”

Passing out is not an option. There are some other things happening as well.

The bathroom fan is haunted by some kind of ghost, because it’s always screaming and screeching, like music escaped the bowels of hell.

“iiiieiiiieiiiiiiiiiieiiiiiiiiiiie!”

My feet hurt and my left heel is killing me. That plantar fasciitis has been bugging me for years.

In a scale of 1 to 100, my posture is minus four trillion. My chest, my back, my feet, my ears — it’s all hurting.

I collect my thoughts for a moment. If this was a battle, I’m losing it. Big time. But I can’t exactly kamikaze my way into historic stardom.

I pretend I’m Robocop. I stand up, flush, and step into the kitchen with zero emotion on my face.

The smell of death hits me like a straight right over the jaw. His mother’s lasagna. Day 4.

I hold my breath and lean forward over the sink. The soap is against the wall by the faucet. I should tell you about this soap.

It is the worst kind of cheap, industrialized, toxic, foul, sweet smelling soap you will ever find. It’s red and supposed to emulate some kind of dystopian strawberry.

Okay. 

Just went and checked the label. 

It reads: EU certified Winter Apple & Rime. 

Yeah.

That’s what we’re dealing with here. 

EU certified Winter Apple & Rime — and it smells like the strawberry Antichrist.

And should you, for any reason, actually push it, it will squirt all over you. Soap. On your clothes. Because it’s old as hell and has dried soap in the opening.

So not only do you have to lean forward awkwardly over that low sink and hold your breath, straining your back and your knees to the breaking point, you also have to make a full 180 degree shield with your other hand.

If this shield has any holes in it, that soap will find its way through and jizz on your shirt.

This soap is so bad, it makes you hate strawberries.

Chapter 13: Dust

I could describe this apartment without mentioning the dust, just like I could watch Alien and pretend there is no alien.

I’ve spent many man-hours trying to figure out where the dust comes from. Because there is too much. You wipe a surface clean and 24 hours later it’s covered in dust. It’s incredible, mind-boggling, stupefying, aggravating.

I’m writing this on a 14-inch white Chromebook. I wiped this screen with my sleeve an hour ago, and now I’m thinking about wiping it again, because I see flecks of dust on there. 

I’m not going to. I will not give into temptation. I need to finish this chapter.

***

I removed every piece of furniture in this room that wasn’t essential. Threw it all in that storage room. I’m down to a bed, an office chair, a computer table, and a small bookcase.

Every blanket, pillow, and mattress in this room came with me when I moved in, so I know that’s not the source. I used to have a rug in here. That’s gone.

I have my window open all day and deep into the night, to get a steady influx of fresh air. It stops me from suffocating in this filth.

I’ve done what I can. 

I’m tired. 

I’m out of options. 

So I retreat into a state of learned helplessness, where I know what to expect.

Am I becoming a vegetable?

If I turn into a zucchini I’m gonna be pissed.

Chapter 14: Taking a Shower

Showering ain’t easy. Continents will move before I step into that mold-infested bathroom.

Like now, it’s May 26, 6:39 PM, it’s raining outside, and I’m listening to Meghan Trainor – All About That Bass on my internet radio.

Yeah it’s pretty clear, I ain’t no size two

But I can shake it, shake it like I’m supposed to do

‘Cause I got that boom boom that all the boys chase

All the right junk in all the right places

I love that song and every time I hear it I’m thinking of all the anorexia it cures. A government issued PR-campaign won’t hit the average teen, but this song will.

Haven’t showered in three days. 

I don’t mean to make this all about me, but I’m a pretty clean guy. I’ve done lots of liver cleanses (about 12), colon cleanses (over 20), and fasting in my days — plus I haven’t been sweating so I’m not exactly reeking.

But I feel unclean.

I’m in that stage where I feel like my body should be itching, but isn’t. His father is here, so that’s my excuse for now. When he leaves, who knows what it will be. I’ll come up with something.

I don’t fear that bathroom, I don’t think.

I have a friend who’s afraid of snakes. Every time you talk about snakes with him, he says, 

“I hate snakes. I just hate them.”

“That’s your way of saying you fear them,” I say.

“No, I just hate them.”

It’s like that.

***

I used to live in Edmonton, Canada. 

I moved there with my family when I was 15. I went to Harry Ainlay High School, one of the biggest high schools in North America with 1500 students. Made from a giant World War 2 bunker. No windows. Terrible acoustics.

My stepfather is Canadian, that’s why we moved. Our first house was in Twin Brooks, a middle class neighbourhood on the edge of town.

But in our second house, the basement was unfinished. This fiberglass material was stuffed into the walls, but there was no plastic over it.

When you were down there, you breathed this fiberglass dust which got stuck in the lungs permanently and caused scar tissue to form around it.

At first, I didn’t know this. So for three long summer nights I slept in there to escape the summer heat. 

Then, I read an article about it online, and I developed a real fear of that basement.

I even had a panic attack over it, because there was no way to get that stuff out of my lungs, and now I would have a bunch of scar tissue in my lungs for the rest of my life.

And maaaaaaaaaaaan are there a lot of breaths in three nights of sleep.

Occasionally, I would have to run down into that basement to get something. I would hold my breath no matter what. No matter how much anxiety and panic showered over me, I would hold my breath.

I’m less scared of mold than I am of fiberglass, because the effect is slow and reversible, as opposed to immediate and permanent with fiberglass.

***

As I stepped into that bathroom, I would hold my breath. Not because I could take a full shower without breathing, but to observe the situation objectively without actively participating in the ecosystem.

Once I removed the shower curtain and saw that the mold was under control, I would breathe again.

The first two minutes of every shower is awkward, because you keep glancing at the mold, wondering what’s going on.

Nothing is going on. 

It’s mold.

But once you get going, you get going real good, and there might even be a happy moment or two. The longest shower I ever took was 20 minutes.

A 100% objective observer that watched my whole shower go down without blinking, would probably have to say I made that shower my bitch.

Chapter 15: Betrayed by The Whore

I began writing this book on: May 15, 2017. It took me 6 days to write a first draft of 15 chapters. It took me another 5 days to write a second draft of 13 chapters. 

11 days ago this book was an idea in my head.

Thank God I’m mildly bipolar. Without the wind in my back, without living on dopamine I don’t really have, it would have taken me about 57 years.

Justin Bieber would have died of old age before I finished this book, okay?

I had this dream, and Morpheus from The Matrix was there.

“Do you Beliebe?” he asked me.

“Do I what, now? BELIEVE?” I challenged and threw my hands out.

“Listen to me carefully,” he continued and held up a picture of Justin Bieber, “Do you, BELIEBE?”

“If you don’t get into character soon I’m gonna start calling you MOO-pheus.”

***

A big reason for writing this book, was the way I was thrown out of the apartment.

Last month, I had a money shortage. I could only pay half my rent on time, and the other half five days later.

I wrote her (my roommate’s mother) a text message where I explained everything and apologized for any inconvenience. I made it very clear that she would get all her money, because that’s always the issue with late payments.

Do you know what she wrote back?

Don’t care. Borrow from someone.

Now, if my text message was “Can’t pay this month, next month you get double!” — that would have been a legitimate answer. But after a long polite letter where I explained everything AND she already got half? That’s unreasonable, and the whore knew it.

This was the end of April. At the very last day of April, April 30, 8 PM, I get this text message:

Need the apartment. Be out by June 2.

That’s also unreasonable, and the whore knew that, too.

Had that text message come four hours later, at 00:01 AM that same night, I would have had another month in the apartment.

You get the rest of this month, whenever it is cancelled, and the next month. That’s the deal.

I knew the period of notice was one month. We agreed on that when I moved in. I’m not mad about that at all.

You buy a bike for 200 dollars, then you’re mad it cost 200 dollars.

YOU BOUGHT IT ASSHOLE.

I’m mad she used her old rotten brain to cut a full month down to four hours.

Four hours? That’s what I get for putting up with her son? Cleaning up after his ass? Give me a break.

***

I’m not stupid. School was very easy for me, and I scored in the top 5 percent in our equivalent of the SAT three separate times (the result is valid for 5 years, so one time I had to renew it and another time I took the test for fun).

I was the only person in my class who got the highest grade in Swedish when I graduated ninth grade for high school, and we had a couple nerds in that class.

Let’s just say I’m much dumber than Einstein and much smarter than a Kangaroo.

If she gave up the apartment, she had three months before she had to be out. That’s law.

She had been planning this thing for 6-12 months. She knew she was giving up the apartment when I moved in.

Still, it was the last lonely day of April when I got the message:

Need the apartment. Be out by June 2.

***

I happen to know that the entire happy family used to live in this apartment. All of them together. Must have been so cozy.

Anti-pity grew up in this apartment. In fact, he was born here.

In my mind’s eye, I can see how it happened.

How she made herself available to that low quality man with no skills. How she spread her legs wide and let that man bury a load deep inside her, and without any precautions whatsoever, let that thing fester and grow inside her like a cancerous alien.

One way or another, that thing came out and started taking on a life of its own. And here we are, 20 years later.

Let’s just say this: I’m not impressed.

***

I turned from Mr. Jekyll into Mr. Hyde. 

Did I have a new interest in art — and just start nailing pictures to the walls? I found special screws on the internet without a “grip” so you can’t unscrew them. Awesome.

Did I take long, methodical showers every day and refuse to open the door afterwards? Have the moist and the mold interlocked in a dance of death that tore that place apart.

The washing machine was in that bathroom, too, so why don’t I turn that on, too. The three-hour water wasting program for carpets. I get a mental orgasm just thinking about it.

Could I hide a fish somewhere? The storage room was a perfect place for operation “Multidimensional Mackerel”, “Saggy Salmon”, or “Tainted Tuna”.

I’m sure the ventilation system could house a broken bottle of oyster sauce just fine. Shrimp and brussels sprouts seem like a nasty combination. I could boil that to pieces and spread that water all over the apartment. Like a holy man spreading “Holy Water”.

That was my gift and I was feeling generous today. Very generous.

50 years from now, this will only be a distant memory. They will look back at it and go “Jeez, I don’t know about that guy, but he made that apartment his bitch.”

Time to get serious. 

I have given that crack whore too much leeway already.

Chapter 16: The Garbage War

The most brutal thing about living in this apartment is that Anti-pity will not, under any circumstances whatsoever, take out the garbage.

You know I have these weeks where I live like a monk and don’t produce a lot of garbage? And the garbage I do produce is pretty clean and non-smelling? The plastic wrapping of rice crackers, the cardboard box of organic basmati rice, that sort of thing? Nothing wet and stinky.

If a homeless person had to sleep in an alley with my garbage, I wouldn’t feel that sorry for him, and it might be the best week of his life.

He might feel like people care by not throwing a bunch of stinky, smelling, rotten crap on his bed — right? 

These people sleep in containers. And sometimes the garbage truck picks it up, empties it, and we have one less homeless man.

How you go from getting the back massage of a lifetime from recycled dildos to being cubed in 15 seconds, only he can answer.

If I’m having a clean week like that, I get especially angry. I’m doing my part, he’s not doing his, and I still have to take out his ugly disgusting garbage.

***

The most disturbing thing are the pizza boxes.

He jams those things down the garbage bag like it was his obligation to humanity.

They never fit — I always have to take them out, manually fold them, and put them in a separate bag. My hands touching slabs of pizza that used to be in that busted corn mouth — ugh!

Cleaning up after this kid isn’t exactly the experience of a lifetime.

***

One time, I made it my primary goal of the week to make him take out the garbage.

On Tuesday, the bag was full. 

Then we had Wednesday. 

Thursday. 

Friday. 

On Friday, I did something amazing.

I went on a mini-vacation to my ex’s house.

I lived there for three days and took care of my daughter. I get along with my ex just fine, especially when she’s gone. Like, she will be at work, go shopping after work, or meet up with friends, and I’ll be home with my daughter and we’re having a blast.

Play-fighting, chasing monsters, watching TV, eating boiled eggs with salt and black pepper, going outside to run and eat red currants — is all on the menu.

We’re basically just hanging out, teasing each other, and relaxing. If you tell my daughter that I will come over, you might as well have told her a magician will crawl out of the chimney and conjure up Santa Claus.

She is two-and-a-half-years-old, and she can be a real drama queen sometimes.

In daycare, the grown ups are afraid of her. Because going against her means 15 minutes of purgatory you have to burn through before you get to the good part.

This particular purgatory is her rolling around on the floor crying and screaming — but she’s more mad than anything. And should she be discomforted in any way for doing this — the grown ups caused that, too.

Those clueless big people, they don’t even know what’s right.

***

My ex lives in a big 9-room house on the top of a small mountain, on the most expensive street in Östersund actually, right by a ski slope. When you breathe that fresh mountain air it feels like you’re in the Alps or something.

She inherited that house. If I had married her, which she wanted, I would have had half. Hell no, I’d rather be a broke fuck and share my flat with the sewage of humanity.

***

When I was on this three day “mini-vacation”, I imagined the garbage bag growing, and growing, and growing.

It started smelling at around Thursday. By Friday morning it was noticeable when you stepped into the kitchen.

By Friday afternoon, when I took the bus to my ex, it was bad.

I would sit on that bus and feel real good about myself. In my mind, the speed bumps went from my worst nemesis to small, wonderful, exhilarating bumps of pleasure.

Life was giving me a cocaine-fueled Swedish massage, and I was banking on that happy ending.

I had created a pressure chamber, my friends, and something would have to give.

***

Would I find him in a fetal position on the floor, his face already decomposed in an ugly version of “The Scream”?

Or would he slay the dragon and emerge victorious with the sword in his hand?

Would the knight in shiny armour make one brash move, slay the dragon, take the princess, and ride off into the sunset on his black stallion?

Or would the steady, relentless, hard-nosed formation of a multidimensional ecosystem grow to conquer this human beast?

If I lived in Las Vegas, and I was a bookmaker, I’d make the odds 50/50.

He would have to bring his A-game for this one.

***

My only worry when I was gone, was that he wouldn’t take out the garbage and I would come home to that shit.

But turns out there is a God after all. I come home both worried and excited — like when you’re about to have sex with a stranger — and check the garbage.

It was gone. 

Empty plastic bag. 

I even tapped it with my hands to make sure it was real. I stood up and looked over at the door to see if he had placed it there. Nope.

I walked up to the front door, opened it, and looked outside. Not there either. He had actually taken out the garbage.

***

I’ve tried many times since then, to repeat that miracle.

I’ve gone for many “mini-vacations” when the bag was full. Always one or two days. Never three. Maybe that was the problem.

For I have not succeeded.

What’s worse, I haven’t even been close. Because I haven’t even been able to make him place the garbage bag by the door. And that is about 30% of taking out the garbage.

Lifting it up, tying it together, and putting it somewhere near the door — I don’t require perfection in this area.

***

If I could be gone for three days, I think I could do it. Not some two-and-a-half-day bullshit where I come home in the middle of the night.

No, I need three full Earth rotations with 24 damn hours in each one.

The sun needs to be coming down hard for at least 12 hours a day. Turning this place into a burning furnace of hell, fire, brimstone, and smoke.

I will cook this guy like a pale salamander until he either acts or rolls over on his back and dies.

The second I step out of that door, that garbage bag will be out-of-control and barely breathing, like an 800 pound Asian woman with sleep apnea.

If I have to donate a pinky to the weather Gods, so be it. This is NAVY seal training for losers, I’ll accept a dead body. Fuck carrots, I’m about the stick.

If I do ALL THAT and it doesn’t push him over the edge, I’ll get some sleeping pills, a garbage bag, and cube his ass to heaven.

Tom Cruise, here he comes.

Chapter 17: The Last Garbage Bag

If there is a God, then he looks like Tom Cruise and greets you when you fail the entrance exam to heaven, and land in hell. Where they train you in Scientology, E-meters, Spirits, and how to join the Sea Org.

Closet Buddhist?

Keep that shit you yourself.

This is hell, and dissenters will burn.

In Sweden, there is something called “flyttstädning”. That final cleanup you do when you move AWAY from somewhere? That’s flyttstädning.

We take obligations seriously in Sweden. Lots of things are riding on them; relationships, your career, your reputation, your self-worth.

If you don’t do a good job in your flyttstädning, then, you will not get a good reference for future residence applications. And without good references, good luck getting a place to live. I’m not ACTUALLY granting you luck, I’m telling you you’re fucked.

***

I had removed all my stuff, the only thing left was some toilet paper and my flyttstädning.

My blood sugar was low, and I had all kinds of vitamin and mineral deficiencies weighing me down. I didn’t feel like I had climbed Mount Everest, not necessarily, but like Mount Everest had climbed up on my back.

My phone beeps and I get this message (I ran it through Google Translate for I can’t stomach translating it myself):

Here it comes:

Wipe all surfaces like boards, shelves, windowsills and the edge of the woods down the floor, lights etc

Wet wax (hot water with a little soap, stronger in it is oily or dirty) with wipe cloth and / or sponge on the benches, in the kitchen also cabinets and fridge o freezer door, wash clean shelves you used in the fridge, wash clean the stove.

All kitchen utensils (except the frying pan) allow you to run the Indian food kettle to make it clean.

Vacuum the floors. Wash clean floors with mop with warm water and soap.

Scrub clean toilet, sink and mirror in the toilet. Do not forget to clean the toilet.

Empty garbage and recycling.

That’s probably all.

I scroll up and find another text message, sent right before that one:

It will be fine. I’ll also send a small list of what to clean in the rooms we agreed to, so that there is no misunderstanding.

That hyena-whore sure knows how to phrase things. “So that there is no misunderstanding”? Man, could she be any more annoying?

I came down to my knees, and scrubbed my room, the kitchen, and my bathroom until dirt became a conspiracy theory.

It was dirty as shit when I moved in.

It was clean as fuck when I moved out.

SO THAT THERE IS NO MISUNDERSTANDING.

That sentence won’t stop making laps in my mind. Am I NASCAR? What the fuck is going on?

I felt like Cinderella, scrubbing the floor with a toothbrush, daydreaming, wishing I was somewhere else.

So that there is no misunderstanding.

Only a primetime badass fucktard of a hyena-bitch could even write that, you know? I think we both know exactly what kind of sentence that is.

I remember being so exhausted, because I had moved all my stuff the same day. I thought about going back to the house, get some rest, and come back later that night to do it. But I stuck to my guns and kept working.

Do you know what my roommate did while I was cleaning?

Nothing.

And when I used the vacuum cleaner, it bothered him so much, that his dad came and picked him up.

As he was leaving, he jammed one of those pizza boxes down the already overfull garbage bag, and something inside me SNAPPED. I knew that was the last plastic bag of the right size.

“You know, when the pizza box is inside it like that, there is no way to close it. It can’t be closed.”

“Eh?” he looked up at me like a retarded monkey.

“You can’t close it with that inside it.”

He eyed the garbage bag like it was a rubik’s cube with seven dimensions.

I still remember the cognitive dissonance in his eyes and the lack of focus and intent in his body language. 

It wasn’t that he was working on a problem he couldn’t solve. It was that he was debating whether the problem actually existed. He was trying to justify it, trying to negate it, and weighing the pros and cons in a very slow and inefficient matter.

Overfull garbage bag.

Right in front of him.

He was looking at it.

Jesus Christ, I thought, how long would it take for this guy to solve Pythagoras theorem? Infinity?

His father was waiting outside, and had been for a couple minutes, but he didn’t honk the horn or anything. I guess he knew his son was a sloth.

Since I don’t have a picture of that garbage bag, let me explain. You know when you buy groceries, but get one plastic bag too few? And you have to fit all those groceries in a single super heavy plastic bag? It was like that, but on steroids.

If the bodybuilder Ronnie Coleman jumped 100 times on each individual item inside that garbage bag, it still wouldn’t fit. It’s too much. There is too much space between the atoms.

***

This garbage bag was FULL.

Have you ever seen a guy that was so fat he defies the laws of physics?

Like, for two strange weeks of my life I watched the TV-show My 600-lb Life on my computer. About two episodes a day, one hour each.

You’re so fat you can’t walk? Standard.

You’re so fat you can’t go to the bathroom, even if you magically appeared on the bathroom stall with your pants drawn down? Sure, I get it.

You won’t get anything but sympathy from me, I’ve seen it all. Most of the people on this show were way above 600 pounds. 600 pounds was the MINIMUM REQUIREMENT for even applying to be on the show.

I remember one woman being so fat she couldn’t stand. Even with one of those walkers old people have? Even with her husband (normal weight) using every muscle on his reasonably thick arms to push her up? Nope. Can’t do it.

The doctors gave her some homework. Sit up in the bed, once a day. Sit up. Just once. Then rest for 24 hours. Then do it again.

It was just that… to do it AGAIN you have to do it a first time.

This woman wanted to have her cake and eat it. And this particular reincarnation of cake? She ate it lying down.

Workout: 0.

Woman: 1.

And then when the TV-show paid for the surgery to remove all the lumps of fat the size of watermelons on her stomach? She had sex with her husband THE VERY next day and ripped all the stitches open.

They only found out once the wounds started producing this white pus the colour and texture of whipped cream.

It didn’t smell like whipped cream. How do I know that? Some things, you just know. This is one of those things.

She went in for emergency surgery, and they took care of it. As I understand it, they had to clean the wounds out, and redo all the stitches.

The fire department had to bring her to the hospital, then home again. And when she came home, they thought she was pregnant. Not the fire department, but the couple themselves.

***

This other guy, who was half white and half mexican, was so fat he gave his father a stroke. His right leg got so out of control big, that parts of it started rotting, and there was mold on it and stuff. It had all the colours of the rainbow, but not in a good way. You don’t want all those colours inside a fat fold on your calf.

He father came in to check on him. He removed the white sheet that covered it all, and saw it. The next second he had to sit down on the couch, and he started vomiting. But he didn’t feel better. So they took him to the hospital, where they scanned his brain, and saw that he had a stroke.

This garbage bag was so full, that it brought that image out of the deeper structures of my brain. Frankly, I had suppressed it because it grossed the shit of out me.

Imagine being so fat you give YOUR FATHER a stroke?

Fat: 1.

Father: 0.

***

Anti-pity was crouching down in front of this overfull garbage bag, looking straight at it with absolutely zero distraction, and he still wasn’t getting it.

That’s when it hit me.

He never took out the garbage bag.

That time I went away and I made him take out the garbage bag? His father must have done it.

I used my nice voice, though it was severely strained:

“You have to, you know, remove the pizza box, but even then, you probably won’t be able to close it.”

“No?”

“No.”

Did you never take out a garbage bag in you entire pointless life? I thought to myself.

I wish he said something that made me realize he was joking. He was playing a charade, pretending to be someone else, just kidding around. But he was using 100% of his brain power right now.

I looked outside. 

Father still there.

Sitting in that wine-red little car. Engine on. Gas coming out of the pipe.

If you dump a bunch of cum in a whore and produce a sloth, that’s what you get. You get to wait in a car outside an apartment for your son who is trying to take out the trash.

***

He might have been TRYING to take out that trash, but there was no room for failure. He wasn’t leaving without that garbage bag. I wouldn’t let him. No way.

Another five seconds passed and they felt like an eternity.

He removed the pizza box and tried closing it. Didn’t work. Wasn’t even close. The fact that he even tried, made me dislike him more. He had a map of reality, and that map was wrong. He was confronted with raw reality and had to adjust.

He was now facing a problem.

In order to tie that garbage bad together, he would have to remove quite a bit of stuff from it. Quite a bit. But I knew, that he didn’t know, how much he would have to remove in order to tie it. Retarded sloths aren’t masters at mental arithmetic.

He looked at it one last time.

He put the pizza box in his left armpit, squeezing it between his arm and his ribs.

He grabbed each “handle” of the plastic bag with a separate hand, and used his right elbow, his free elbow, to open the front door (didn’t close it).

He walked down the stairs and up to the car. His father leaned over from the driver’s seat and popped the handle, opening the door from the inside.

Anti-pity did this motion where he half sat in the air, and tipped over sideways into the car like a statue. Once inside the car, he dropped the pizza box with his left elbow, and used his newly freed arm to adjust his seating.

He was now sitting in the car like a normal person with an overfull untied garbage bag between his legs. Was that the only bag of garbage between his legs? (Sorry! I just had to say it).

His dad accelerated the car towards the garbage station, and they arrived ten seconds later.

He would now throw that completely open garbage bag into a big green box at the garbage station and never think about it again.

But he did take out the trash.

Me: 1.

The Carrot Man: 0.

THE END