Yes, so it happened that I came into raggarlivet! Interesting, wasn’t it? But now I’m not able to write any more. You can write me back, if you have time between the turns. Not the turns on the street and not the turns on a knitting, I mean, but the turns that have a special meaning when you use them in a special expression. You get what I mean, don’t you? Great! See you later alligator!
Kicki
On Midsummer Eve I rode with two guys and a girl in an Opel, and for once the guy who didn’t have a girl was handsome. His name was Björn and he was eighteen years old. The other two were Lasse and Lena and they were engaged. We went to Björkvallen People’s Park, where Lasse and Lena got out to dance, while Björn and I remained in the car. I thought he was a little childish, because he asked me how far I usually let guys go and if I had ever been with older guys, and he got cross when I didn’t want to kiss him and thought that I didn’t like him. But it was just his kisses I didn’t like, because they were so hard and strange. He wanted to see me again and said that he would call, but he probably won’t.
Yesterday it was a guy named Rune who drove for Becke, and I went with them when Becke asked me to. I didn’t think that he would mess with me like the last time, but as soon as I had entered the car, he started. I screamed at Rune to stop, and when he did I tried to get out.
“Drive on, damn it!” Becke said.
“No, I’m getting out here,” I said and tried to open the door. But I couldn’t reach the door handle before he threw himself forward and tore my hand away from it.
“Now you keep calm!” he said and pressed me down on the back seat.
“If you don’t let me go I’ll scream,” I said.
Then he covered my mouth with his hand and said to Rune:
“Put a record on, damn it! Put “Jailhouse Rock” on and drive!”
And Rune obeyed. As soon as Becke loosened his grip I screamed, but the music was so jacked up that I couldn’t be heard outside.
“Shut up!” he said and twisted my arm up on my back.
“It hurts!”
“Promise that you won’t make up a fuss, then.”
“But you’re the one who’s doing that!”
“Promise that you’ll do exactly as I say.”
“But I want to get out!”
“So that’s the kind of girl you are!”
“What kind?”
“The kind that comes along for just five minutes!”
“Yes, that’s right!”
“Fuck you!”
“The same to you!”
When I could finally get up, I leaned forward towards Rune and told him to stop, again.
“Just go ahead, damn it!” Becke shouted.
“Is it him or you that decides?” I asked Rune.
“We decide things together,” Becke said.
“But he’s the one driving.”
“Yes, and he drives the way I want!”
I thought I would try to jump out at the next red light, but it was green lights all the way, and soon we were out of town.
“Drive out to Ulva,” Becke said.
When we got out on the Gävle highway he rolled the side window down and stuck his elbow out. It was pleasant to feel the draft, because I was so sweaty. Trees and fields glided by, and Elvis sang “Lawdy, Miss Clawdy” so it felt like the tires rolled around in time with the music. Becke held his other arm around my shoulders, but he didn’t say or do anything until we got there and Rune stopped the car on a grass area and got out. Then Becke dragged me down on the back seat and laid himself on top of me. He wanted to lay me and pulled up my dress and tried to get my panties off.
“If you don’t stop I’ll call Rune,” I said.
“Don’t kick up a fuss now.”
“But I don’t want to do it!”
“Don’t kick up a fuss I said!”
“If you do anything, it will be rape.”
“Nobody will believe you.”
“But there’s a witness.”
Though I didn’t know where Rune was.
“He isn’t here,” Becke said and started to unbutton his fly. And then, just as he was about to pull his pants down, I got away, managed to open the door and hopped out. I tried to run away, but he caught me, twisted my arm and threw me against the car so that I fell. Everything happened so fast, and then Rune came up to me and helped me up.
“Leave off now, damn it!” he said and glared at Becke.
Then Becke went to the trunk, took out a bottle of beer, put a foot on the bumper and began to swig from the bottle. When he had finished it, he threw it away and set the car rocking with his foot. Then he hopped in behind the steering wheel and started the engine. There were some wilted birch branches stuck in the Dodge’s grill, and the front window reflected the sun so you couldn’t see into the car. I glanced at Rune to check if he would react, but he didn’t, and Rune turned the car around on the grass and drove forward a few meters and said to me through the window:
“Are you coming?”
So he didn’t think that I should be abandoned there, anyway. When Rune came up to him he got out, went around the car and opened the door on the other side and looked at me.
“Come and sit here in front,” he said.
It was still warm inside the car. Becke pressed in “Heartbreak Hotel” and put his arm behind me on the backrest and Rune beat time with his fingers against the steering wheel while he drove. It felt so cosy sitting there between them in the front seat, watching the roadway disappear under the car.
When we got back to town, I thought they would let me go, but they didn’t. Rune stopped the car, but Becke held on to me.
“Ride with us tonight,” he said.
“No, I’m getting out now.”
“Why?”
“Because.”
But he didn’t budge, so I asked Rune if I could get out on his side instead. Then
Rune looked back at Becke and said:
“Let the chick go.”
“No, she’s going to ride with us tonight,” Becke said.
I started staring out the window, and when Becke noticed that I was angry, he said:
“Damn it, you’re really dumb!”
“So are you!” I said.
“You are the dumbest in your entire damn class!”
“What do you know about that?”
“Everything!”
“So you know someone in my class, then?”
“No, but in another class.”
“There’s nobody who knows anything about me in another class!”
I was so tired of sitting there talking back with him.
“Look at me,” he said.
“Why?”
“Because I say so!”
Then I turned my face towards Rune instead.
“You only look in his direction!” Becke said.
“I have a right to look wherever I want.”
“You are looking at him just because he’s the one driving!”
“Sure!”
“Look at me I said!”
And he grabbed ahold of my chin and twisted my head towards him.
“Give me a kiss!” he said.
“Yes, if you let me go.”
“Let her be off, damn it,” Rune said.
But it was a long time before he did. And outside the car he placed himself in front of me and started running his hands roughly over my hair.
“Promise that you’ll ride with us some other time,” he said.
But I knew that I would never do it again, so I couldn’t promise it.
Then I went with two guys and a girl in a dark green Volkswagen. The guy driving was called Chrille and he was cute, but there was a girl with him, so I got the other one, who they called Klangen. He was one of those naively foolish types that I’m not interested in and with whom I know nothing could ever happen.
I went to town again yesterday evening. First I was at the movies and watched a film with Tony Curtis, Marilyn Monroe and Jack Lemm
on. It was at Spegeln, and it was the first time I was at that cinema. Later, when I sat on a bench near the Saga and smoked, a guy came and sat down next to me.
“What are you waiting for?” he asked. “Better times?”
I had seen him and heard of him before.
“You are the guy called Sudden, aren’t you?” I said.
“Everyone knows the monkey but the monkey doesn’t know anybody!” he said.
Then he asked me to blow smoke from my cigarette straight into his mouth. It’s called a bum puff, he said. And when I sat there with my mouth against his, there was some whistling from a passing car and a guy cried:
“Press hard! You’re already halfway in!”
I don’t know if Sudden heard it. Anyway, he didn’t say anything. He rested his elbows on his knees and held his head in his hands.
“Aren’t you feeling well?” I said.
“That’s none of your business.”
“But why are you sitting like this?”
“Because I’m tired and sick and I’m going to jail soon.”
“Why?”
“Why?” he imitated me.
“Yes, what have you done so that you must go to jail?”
“Driving without a heavy vehicle license.”
“But you surely aren’t sent to jail for that?”
Then he just stared at me without saying anything. So maybe one can be. I don’t know.
“I’m sick and tired of everything,” he said as he looked up into the tree crown. “If I could, I would put an end to everything.”
After a while he asked me if I would like to come along with him to his home, and I did, though I didn’t know if I wanted to.
On the way there, Rune and Becke drove by. They hooted and Sudden raised his right arm.
“Do you know them?” I said.
“Yeah, why?”
“Because I rode with them yesterday.”
“Ah, fuck.”
“But it was no fun, because he was violent.”
“Who?”
“Becke.”
“Becke-in-a-hurry?”
“Yes, if that’s what he’s called.”
“Then he should have a beating.”
He lived in a two-stored house on Gamla Uppsalagatan. We crept up the stairs to the second floor and came into a bedroom that smelled musty and stuffy. The curtains were drawn, so at first I didn’t notice a boy, who was sleeping in the other bed. It was his brother.
When we lay on the other bed and he had taken his pants off, I said I didn’t want to.
“Why not? Are you going steady?”
“No, but we don’t know each other.”
Then he tossed his head and snorted:
“So that’s your fucking style!”
“Yes, I think you should know each other first and not the opposite.”
“So first you should be together for a while and then start sleeping together, you mean?”
“Yes.”
“You have the wrong style!”
“That’s not what I think.”
But he pulled down my panties and laid himself on top of me between my legs. He was so strong that I couldn’t hinder him. When I tried to get away he pressed me down harder in the bed. When I realized that I couldn’t do anything, I got scared. It was maybe true that he was tired of everything, and if he was thinking about killing himself, it probably didn’t make any difference to him if he raped somebody first. But then he put on a rubber, and I thought he wouldn’t have done that if that were the case.
“Don’t struggle now,” he said and forced me to lie still. “When this is done, we’ll go downtown again.”
I felt how he pressed and tried to come in, but the rubber was too dry so it didn’t work. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t dare to scream and I didn’t want to beg him to stop, because that would have felt so degrading. Finally, I started to cry.
“Stop weeping, damn it,” he said.
“But I don’t want you to!”
“If we knew each other then?”
“What do you mean?”
“Would you let me if we knew each other? I could think of being together with you for a while first, if you would rather have it that way.”
“But you must also like each other.”
Know that you feel that way, I meant, but he didn’t get it.
“So that’s how you look at me!” he said.
“Yes, I can’t know what I would feel if I knew you.”
“You have the wrong style I say!”
“So you think that one can lay anybody?”
“Yes, you can.”
“But I don’t want to”.
“Then why did Becke get to do it?”
“He didn’t.”
“Tell me another one!”
“But I’m telling the truth. Nobody gets to do it with me.”
I thought he was even worse than Becke, though he had said that Becke would have a beating because he had tried to force me.
“Why the hell did you come along with me then?”
“Because I was dumb.”
Then he jumped up and pulled his pants on and said that I could get up and dress. He was angry and just left without any concern for me. Not until then I remembered his brother who had laid there the whole time and surely had overheard everything. It was maybe because of him that Sudden hadn’t done anything more with me after all.
When we came out he started out for town, and I followed him. At the railroad crossing the barriers came down and he had to stop, and then I caught up to him. I asked if he were angry, but he just turned himself away and went up to a car and started to talk with the guys sitting in it. Then he whistled and shouted:
“You can ride with these guys! They’ll give you a lift home!”
I wanted to say that I didn’t need any help from him to get home, but then I thought I might as well accept it and went up to the car.
“Do you have ten kronor?” Sudden said.
“Why?”
“Because that’s what it costs.”
But why would I pay for a lift home when I can get one for free as easily as ever?
“How the hell will it be?” Sudden said. “We don’t have all night.”
“No, exactly,” I said and walked away from there.
I have clipped this out of the newspaper. It’s about what raggarna did in Öregrund during midsummer.
Violent uproar in Öregrund because of an invasion by 1000 raggare. The raggare invasion the small town in Roslagen, Öregrund, suffered defies all description reports police assistant Thorsten Helander to UNT on Sunday evening, when the huge fight was over and the police could summarize the results of the midsummer celebrations in Öregrund. 1000 raggare of both sexes arrived in 250 cars and caused a stir in the form of drunkenness, fist fights, and disorderly conduct. Sexual intercourse scenes took place at several places. 15 raggare were arrested for drunkenness, but these were only the worst of the many who qualified to be taken into police custody.
…
Most of the raggare stayed in Öregrund and pitched their tents. Most of them showed no concern for others but just encroached upon gardens and summer cottage plots with their tents. Fences were torn down and crushed with cars. Inside the tents there were now and then fistfights, alcohol bottles were being cast about and there were other scenes as well. In town a couple of raggare performed their calls of nature on a street before strolling pedestrians. People called the police and came up with one report after the other.
…
Several of the sexual intercourse scenes were completely public. A couple of them were unashamedly lying on a bridge down by Hamntorget at nine o’clock on Midsummer Day morning. Similar scenes were also happening at a party location in town.
…
Even on Midsummer Day there was a lot of unrest but everything calmed down on Sunday. Actually, it is a good thing that midsummer 1964 is over, police assistant Helander finally says.
Tues
day, 23 June 1964
Il fait beau aujourd’hui. Il fait de soleil.
I have received a letter from E-L. On Midsummer Eve she was with a guy named Björn, and on Midsummer Day evening she rode with Becke again, dumb as she is. It was he and another guy, and they went out to the Ulva Mill, and once there he threw himself over her again and tried to get to lay her. But she forced her way out of the car (and avoided a fate worse than death), and after a while he calmed down and let her go back to town with them.
The next evening, she met another guy, whom she followed to his home. They were lying on his bed and had taken off some of their clothes, when it turned out to be the same thing with him, that he didn’t want to stop when she said no. He held her and was absolutely determined to have his way with her. Then she turned on the waterworks, and he weakened and let her be. (Tears are a woman’s best weapon!) Yes, it was a narrow escape! Actually, it was close that she lost her virginity there.)
On Midsummer Eve, when she was with that Björn at a local dance and they sat in the car in the parking lot, she saw a guy being beaten, she wrote.
Violence and fist fights I do not like! I watch out for boys who are violent and get involved in crime. Most of the boys E-L and I meet have nothing to hide, but there are others too, and I know I want to have a well-behaved boy and not one of those half-criminal types. I’m not interested in associating with jailbirds. But if I met a boy who had been in prison I would not judge him unheard, because it would depend on why he had done what he had done, also. If he had done time for car theft or something like that, so it wasn’t abuse or manslaughter, and if he had quit and learned from his mistakes, I would not worry very much about it. But I couldn’t go steady with anyone who is constantly involved in crime.
On Wednesday I was out. I rode with a guy in a Volvo PV with a transparent sunshade at the top of the front windshield. He had had a real cruiser before, he said. It was a Ford Thunderbird Cabriolet. But it sucked so much gas that he couldn’t afford to keep it.
He knew Tiger. Three years ago, Tiger was raggarkung in Uppsala. It had been written about him and his gang in the newspaper, and Tiger was photographed with a sign that said “The Naughty Devils”. The gang was actually called “The Night Devils”, but the company that had made the sign had misunderstood the name and painted it incorrectly.
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