“Where are we going to sleep?” Casper asked, looking at the single bed. “Not sure I care to camp out in a single bed again…” He chuckled, fondly remembering their first months together, as they explored their bodies and bonded, usually in Nilas’s single bed at the dorms.
“That’s a very good question. We do have a guest room with a double bed, but I’ll be honest, I haven’t broached the subject with Mom. I wasn’t sure how… You know…” Nilas blushed.
“It’s fine. Worst case, I’ll just have to come sneaking into your room at night…” Casper laughed, but Nilas shook his head.
“Forget about that. My parents sleep just underneath here, and the wooden floors aren’t exactly soundproof. They’d hear every sound we make… Trust me, I have…” Nilas blushed some more, much to Casper’s delight, who could barely stand straight, given how hard he was laughing.
“So no sex during this vacation? How boring. Do you have a quiet forest somewhere around here?”
“Wait here. I’ll go ask Mom.”
“I need to use the bathroom.”
“It’s at the end of the corridor. You’ll have to pull a bit extra on the door. It’s crooked. Old house,” Nilas said as he sprinted down the stairs.
“Tjidtjie?”
“Yes, dear?” he heard from the kitchen.
“I, uh, where, uh, will we sleep?”
“Guest room, of course.” Inga laughed. She turned around to face Nilas. “Dad even put in a new carpet this year, to better insulate the room. That way, not every sound travels through the ceiling, up or down. But I would still like you two to be a bit discreet…” Suddenly, she began to cry, uncontrollably, out of the blue.
“Tjidtjie, what’s the matter?” Nilas rushed to her and took her in his arms. After calming down, she dried her tears off on her apron and apologized. “I’m sorry, son, but this has been a difficult time. Ever since those articles appeared in the papers, about AIDS, I’ve been scared that you would call one day and tell us that you were sick, too. I couldn’t stand it if you died before me. No mother would.”
“Tjidtjie, please, don’t worry. I mean, Casper and I are both healthy as horses, and we haven’t been to a club for almost two years, and we’re, uh, exclusive.”
Inga interrupted him, “But I read in some of the papers that there could be a long incubation period. Casper could’ve gotten it before you two met?”
“Well, there is no guarantee, but all the cases that we’ve seen have been fairly rapid. Casper is a good man, Mom. He wouldn’t hurt me.”
“Maybe not intentionally,” Inga shot back, almost immediately regretting her words.
“Listen, tjidtjie, I love him, and he loves me. We are very careful. We read everything we can, we eat healthy, and we don’t sleep around. Until there’s a test, that’s all we can do.”
“But you still have sex?” Inga asked, looking Nilas square into his eyes.
Nilas blushed and felt that all too familiar sense of his ears burning with shame. “Yes, Mom, not that it’s any of your business. I told you. We are careful.”
“What does that even mean, careful?” She glared at him now.
“Please, tjidtjie. You’ll just have to trust us. I’m not going to discuss my sex life with you, now or ever. It’s just too embarrassing.”
“Well, you better get used to it, if you want to live. Do they even know how it’s transmitted?”
“Not really, but I guess that it all boils down to bodily fluids.”
“So blood, sperm, saliva, sweat?”
“Tjidtjie, please…”
“No, don’t ‘please’ me. I’m worried.”
Nilas sighed, very uncomfortable with this discussion. “Yes, those, I guess.”
“So you could already have infected me?”
“If AIDS were transmitted so easily, half the population of the planet would be dead by now. According to the experts, it only affects men who have multiple sex partners and who have sex regularly. Then there are a few cases where people have gotten sick from blood transfusions and, as far as I know, one woman who was infected by her partner, but he’d been around the block himself, so that wasn’t really a surprise.
“Mom, look at me.” He took her face in his palms and looked her straight into her eyes. “I’m healthy. I haven’t even had a cold this year. I’m about as far from being sick as you can get. And we’re taking precautions, okay?”
“Precautions. But what does that mean? Help me understand, son, this is really stressing me out.”
Nilas sighed. “Okay, then let’s talk about this, but let me go get Casper. I want him to be a part of this conversation, too. Give me a minute, okay?” Without waiting for his mom to respond, he jogged back upstairs, where Casper was just emerging from the bathroom.
“You weren’t exaggerating when you said that the sound carries in this house. What was that all about?” Casper chuckled, but his expression changed when he noticed how serious Nilas looked.
“You need to come downstairs. It’s time for the talk,” Nilas said and made air quotes to emphasize the severity of what awaited them.
All Casper could muster was an “Oh.”
Later, as they sat at the Jonsson kitchen table, drinking coffee and tea, and sampling a selection of seven kinds of cookies, as Swedish tradition bids, Nilas broached the subject of sex.
“Tjidtjie, to your question earlier… I’m not sure how much detail you need to understand, so you’ll have to tell us when to stop, okay?” He looked at her, and he could tell that she felt very uncomfortable with the subject, too.
“I don’t even know where to start. This is so embarrassing, but here goes nothing. When Casper and I first met, we did little else but exchange hand jobs, and some oral sex. We had just begun to…” He looked at his mother, who was looking down at the kitchen table, stoically listening to her son. “Are you okay?”
Inga looked up and looked ten years older than she had when they’d appeared at the door. “No, son, I’m not okay, but I will be. Ever since you told us that you were gay, we have feared for your life. Not because of AIDS—we didn’t even know that existed—but because of how fearful and evil society can be. So many crimes are committed against gays. So yes, your father and I have been afraid, very much so, ever since you moved to Stockholm. I never told you about some of the things your jyönna had to endure… But this AIDS? It’s just so scary, all those young men dying, needlessly, and we don’t even know how you get it, how it’s transmitted.”
“I know, Mom, which is why I’m telling you again. We’re being careful. We never ejaculate on each other, we don’t swallow, and we’ve all but stopped having anal sex. It just doesn’t feel safe, you know? I’m sure that someday, they’ll find out how the virus is transmitted, but I really don’t think we have it. We have friends who have it, and several have already died, and they were only sick for a few months.”
Tears began to roll down Inga’s cheeks.
“Tjidtjie, please don’t cry.” Nilas stretched out his arm and took his mother’s hand in his. “Please believe us, we are being as careful as we can.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t have sex at all? You know, until they find out what’s causing this? Maybe it’s not a virus at all, but gay sex as such?”
Casper had listened to the exchange silently, not wanting to get involved, but Nilas could feel that he was sitting on needles, not only because he felt embarrassed by the conversation, but also because he’d not even told his parents about Nilas yet, or about being gay in the first place, and he doubted very much that they’d ever have a conversation that resembled this one. Because, for as embarrassing it may have been, it also demonstrated just how accepting Inga was of Nilas and how good a relationship they had in order to have such a difficult talk.
Finally, Casper said, “With all due respect, Inga, I don’t think I could ever not be with Nilas. Yes, we are taking every sensible precaution, but if we stopped being intimate, we’d just be roommates. To be able to hold N
ilas, to feel him, skin on skin, that is what makes us who we are. It’s where I gather the strength to go to work, even if I don’t feel like it. It’s what keeps me going when the world around me seems to be crumbling. I love Nilas. I love your son. He is the best thing that’s ever happened to me, and I don’t want to lose him. He’s so much more than just my best friend, do you understand that? Yes, we are careful, but please don’t ask us to completely abstain from being intimate.”
Inga looked at Casper and asked, “Have you guys ever used a condom?”
Nilas and Casper exchanged puzzled glances. “No, we haven’t. Why?”
“Well, it seems like the logical thing to do, don’t you think?” Inga shrugged. “I mean, it keeps women from getting pregnant. Maybe it’ll keep you safe, too?”
The boys looked at each other again, puzzled. They hadn’t really considered the idea, even though they had once read it in one of the brochures they’d found in one of the health clinics. The best advice out there so far had simply been to avoid sick people, be monogamous, and stay away from bodily fluids.
“I still think you should refrain from sex, though, just to be on the safe side. Until they know what this thing is,” Inga added, worry written all over her face.
Later in the evening, after dinner, Nilas took Casper for a long walk through the village and alongside the lake. At this time of year, the sun barely set this far north, and at nine p.m., it still stood high in the sky, feeling warm and comforting.
“What do you think about my mom’s suggestion?” Nilas brought the discussion back from general chitchat about the surroundings and childhood memories to the difficult talk they’d had with his mother earlier in the afternoon.
“Which one? To stop having sex?” Casper was being sarcastic. He had always been the one with the higher sex drive. “I don’t know, Nilas. I’m not sure I could ever go without it. On the other hand, how much sex have we had in the past twelve months? We cuddle, we jerk each other off, we kiss, but we haven’t had anal sex since we learned about Björn. So in a way, we’re already ‘not’ having sex.”
Nilas could sense the frustration in Casper’s words. “I know, I know, and I understand how you feel about it. On the other hand, the mere thought of losing you, the thought of dying within months, isn’t appealing, either.”
Casper took a deep breath and let the air out slowly before he responded. “I know. I’m not trying to contradict you. And your mom is right. It’s not worth risking our lives just because we want to get our rocks off. It’s not. Really. I get that. It’s just that it feels so amazing, that feeling to be one with you, to become something more than just two human beings being intimate. And having been there, done that, I miss it, you know?”
“What did you think of her suggestion of using a condom?”
“I have no idea. I recall reading something about it in one of the gay magazines, but I haven’t had a condom in my hand since, like, seventh grade, when one of my classmates found one in his parents’ nightstand. We used it as a water balloon and threw it off an overpass at people. I’ve never put one on myself. I have no idea how that feels. Have you?”
Nilas shook his head.
They walked for a while, taking in the scenery down by the lake. The water lay completely still. There wasn’t a ripple on the surface, and the surrounding forest, the mountain, and the sun were perfectly mirrored in the glass-like lake. They sat down on the grass by the shore and just took it all in, without saying a word.
“Maybe we could try it?” Nilas suggested after a while.
Casper shrugged. “Sure, if you want to. But where do you buy condoms?”
“I have no idea. A pharmacy, maybe? I could ask Mom.” Nilas laughed. “I guess, after today’s conversation with her, there’s not much left that could embarrass me.”
* * * * *
1989
Gothenburg
“Gothenburg? Are you out of your mind? That’s clear on the other side of the country. Why would we ever move there?” Nilas was stupefied. Casper had come home from work announcing that he’d landed a job at the University of Gothenburg. Or, rather, he would, provided they moved there.
“Oh, come on, Nilas. You’ve said yourself that you wanted to move away from the hustle and bustle of Stockholm. I think Gothenburg is the perfect place to be. It’s smaller, yet still a city with a great cultural life and loads of job opportunities for an engineer. The linguistic department in Gothenburg is miles ahead of the one here. This is a once-in-a-lifetime chance for me.”
Nilas growled but knew he had no real arguments to counter Casper. He’d been to Gothenburg, once, way back when he was a kid and his parents took him and his sister Anna on a tour of the country. He remembered the port, the many cranes, the shipyards, and the smell of the ocean, salty and tangy. So unlike Stockholm, with its sophistication, its many palaces and mansions. He’d kinda liked Gothenburg, but that was before he’d spent almost a decade in Stockholm.
“But, Casper. Gothenburg is falling apart. The shipyard industry is dying, and from what I hear, Volvo isn’t doing well, either. Why would you want to move to a dying city?” He knew, of course, that what he’d said would fall on deaf ears to a linguist.
They talked about moving that night, over dinner, in quiet subdued voices, as they usually did. Casper was a country boy, from the vast plains in the west. He, too, had come to Stockholm to study, to become a teacher, a linguist. And even though the city of Gothenburg, with its famous linguistic data department, lay only a couple of hours away by car, he had often longed for the larger city, with its siren call to the young and tiny queer populace of Götene commune.
His parents hadn’t been quite as supportive as Nilas’s folks, after Casper had finally come home one day, years after having met Nilas, to break the news. Instead, Casper’s father had threatened to disavow his son, to never leave him a penny, despite the impossibility of his claim. Children in Sweden were entitled to their legal lot, no matter what parents said or did. Not that Casper would’ve cared. He barely spoke to his parents these days.
But, unlike Nilas, Casper had never really rooted himself in Stockholm. Even after a decade and his work as a lecturer at the university, he still felt like a stranger in this metropolis. Nilas knew that. Casper didn’t make friends easily, and had it not been for that one time he’d stopped by that gay bar on his way home and found the courage to actually strike up a conversation with “that dark-haired and handsome guy brooding over his drink”—as Casper had described Nilas since—he’d probably have left Stockholm a lot sooner.
Yet in one of life’s freak encounters, he and Casper had hit it off, fallen in love, and moved in with each other. They had finished their studies, and Nilas had found work as an engineer at a local construction firm, while Casper had moved on in the academic world, writing his thesis, doing his PhD and then becoming a full-time lecturer.
The years passed by in their little bubble, until a few weeks ago, when Casper had gotten a call from a colleague in Gothenburg. One of the professors had passed away unexpectedly, and they were looking for someone younger, someone who specialized in exactly his field: data linguistics. In Stockholm, nobody cared much about using computers for linguistic science, with the exception of writing essays, but Gothenburg was different. It was also officially responsible for the preservation of the Swedish language on behalf of the Swedish Academy, with a comprehensive list of every single Swedish word ever used.
Without computers, that would be an impossible task. But Casper recognized that computers could be used for so much more, not just to write papers, but also for the analysis of speech patterns, and to preserve morsels of oral language that were on the brink of extinction.
While Casper was most likely already picturing himself researching away at the modern facilities in Gothenburg, things were different for Nilas. Very different. Gothenburg was even further away from his beloved Sápmi, not to mention his dream of one day working on researching cell phone technology. Woul
d he be able to uproot himself and move to the West Coast with Casper?
“You know how much this would mean for me, professionally, beäjvviebájttuo!” Casper had begun to call Nilas his “beäjvviebájttuo,” meaning sunshine in Ume Sami—Nilas’s own language—during their first trip to Ammarnäs back in 1984. He’d struggled to learn many other words in Sami, since the indigenous people were so used to speaking Swedish to everybody, and particularly since most of them barely even spoke the language themselves, thanks to the discrimination at the hands of the Swedes who had not only forbidden the Sami to speak their language in school, but anywhere else until just recently.
But Casper remembered this one incident, where they were standing on the summit of the local mountain above Ammarnäs, looking down the barren ski slopes in the summer, the village below, the lake and the never-ending mountain landscape extending around them. At some point, it was in the late evening, they were watching as the sun began its descent beyond the horizon, to the west, in Norway, when Casper noticed how the sunlight reflected off Nilas, given him an almost transcendent, godlike appearance, with a golden glow to his skin, and the deep-orange hues of the sunlight reflecting on his brown retinas.
Casper had asked him about the name for “sun,” and he’d been given this word as an answer, and ever since then, he’d been called “beäjvviebájttuo,” his sunshine, by Casper, as a reminder of that very special moment together. Casper had never forgotten how golden Nilas had looked that evening.
“Just come with me to Gothenburg, have a look around the city, while I’m doing my interviews. Who knows? You might even like it there.”
Nilas knew, of course, that without him, Casper would never leave Stockholm; he’d never accept the job. If he ever had to make a choice, it would always be Nilas, no matter the consequences, and Nilas felt the same. They came as a package deal, together, a couple, rather than each of them alone. Just a year ago, the Swedish parliament had adopted a cohabitation law that had given their relationship a certain legal protection; more than that, Nilas knew that Casper felt Nilas provided him with the stability and the social cohesion he’d lacked so badly before they’d met.
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