Mad Black Men and Swedes

Jerry Harris

Copyright 2015 by Jerry Harris, San Francisco, Ca. All Rights Reserved This book may not be transmitted, or stored in whole by any means, including graphic, electronic, or mech- ical without the expressed written consent of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations in critical articles and reviews

ISBN: 978-1508625896

PADMA BOOKS LTD

To Britt-Marie Olofsson-Harris

Without you I could not have gone on

4- Mad Black Men and Swedes

Chapter One

“I have seen the wind of the wings of madness pass over me.”

Charles Baudelaire

“Do They Have People in Sweden?” Asked my sister’s four-year-old son.

“Leave your uncle Phil alone, Jason. He’s trying to watch the evening news,” she shouted from

her upstairs bedroom. “It’s okay, Beverley. There is nothing important on at the moment. I told

my nephew that there are people living in Sweden, but they didn’t look like him or me. I didn’t

fail to mention that there were some black people there too. They didn’t look black either. They

were like ghosts of their former selves, many were mad.

My sister came down and took her son up to his room and put him to bed. I was home again, me,

Philip Turner. This time I was broke but not busted. I was trying to jump start my literary life one

more time. My face bore the marks of suffering, yet I felt no lasting injury from my fall from a

Nordic mountain of lust, debauchery, alcohol, displacement, fornication, love, hate, and

discovery. To bend is to expand. In the world that I have left, I was glad to get out of the cold. I

am now eager to start into this journey. Are you?

I was staying with my younger sister and her husband who worked nights as a special police

officer. She is an elementary school teacher. They lived in a new townhouse in Germantown,

Maryland, down the beltway from Washington, D.C. The view form their house and man-made

lake, assured me that they had a piece of the American cherry pie. It was the same old shit—you

eat it. Yeah, people have to have places to live in. That’s how the world is.

5-Mad Black Men and Swedes

Even though they were middle-class black Americans, I liked the fact that they never forgot their

roots. One could laugh with them as only black people know how to do, and feel as if the

surrounding white community wasn’t there at all. Their living room reflected their good taste in

African American art, and on their wall hung two unique prints by Jacob Lawrence. I sat there

looking at a small African sculpture that stood on the Danish teak-wood table. I was surprised

that their sofa was from IKEA, reminding me too much of Swedish and socialist simplicity. The

AA meetings that I had been attending for a year were coming along good. My liver was on the

mend. Beverly was my favorite sister. I had two more, but only Bev, as we all called her,

understood my unruly life as a writer, coupled with my Sagittarius nature. She said that mom and

dad still couldn't understand why I chose to live in Sweden all of those years. I couldn’t

understand it either. It is our parents who know those read lights and pot holes.

“Deb, come here quick,” I shouted. She rushed down the stairs and we both looked at a

photograph of a black man on the evening news while the reporter read the following, “The

police are looking for this man, Sergeant John M. Jackson. He escaped from Andrews Air Force

Base in Washington, D.C. Jackson might have crossed into Canada, seeking a flight to Sweden.

He has been under arrest for desertion after his return to the United States. He is considered

dangerous and was convicted of a brutal ax murder in Stockholm, Sweden where he lived for

many years. We will be back after this message from our sponsors.”

“Do you know him, Phil?”

“Yeah, I know him,” and added, “all the brothers in Stockholm know each other.”

“He looks like a weird due,” Phil

“Shit, that is an understatement, Bev.”

“I am going to join Jason and get some sleep.”

“Okay, good night, but I have to make a phone call to Stockholm. Is that okay?” “Yes.”

6-Mad Black Men and Swedes

There was no logic to all of this, and yet it seems to even follow me back across the pond. Talk

about tales from the crypt, this news about Johnny Jackson was macabre. I decided to call

Ottman, an alcoholic black American poet who knew everything about the black American

colony in Stockholm. I dialed his number, determined to make the conversation short because he

was known as the town gossip, and when he was into his “cups,” Vino Tinto, his monologue was

never ending. The phone rings. His Finnish wife answers. I spoke with the poet, giving him the

details about Johnny Jackson. “Man, that is a strange nigger, Phil. You know that he went back to

Germany and gave himself up to the U.S. Army, knowing that he was wanted for treason, and

not just for desertion, none of the brothers could understand him.” Varsagod, as they say in

Sverige. Now, this story becomes a confession. All cows are black when the lights are out.

We talked briefly and I hung up. His paramnesia was still intact. It was just like mine use to be.

He was making love to the bottle. One needs another word to hang on Johnny’s persona and the

the others. Understanding Sweden from my outlook, one has to get into the whole unhealthy

circus of it all. Broken down by class, Johnny and the over one hundred African Americans that

lived in Stockholm at my time there, were the usual American mix: clowns, artists, bogus

political people, writers, musicians, workers, and plain old hustlers—the American apple pie

personified. Transport them to Snow White Land, and they change into the Booze Brothers. They

long for soul food in a Scandinavian igloo. It’s the pittypanna (Swedish hash). They loved that

smoking kind of hash too. Johnny was one of the hustlers who moonlighted as an arbetare

(worker). He wasn’t a Swedish worker; they listen to Beethoven on their lunch breaks. They all

had Huxley’s soma.

Now I am not browbeating anyone, because we all had one thing in common: our own stories

about mad black men and Swedes. Okay, maybe it was only the blacks that were mad. Swedish

madness is unique in its own way, like an Ingmar Bergman film, or a play by August Strindberg.

7-Mad Black Men and Swedes

I don’t think Johnny liked me very much. None of us really loved each other. Perhaps it was the

climate, or the utter lack of communication between anyone there—blacks and Swedes.

Everyone seemed to be caught in a triangle of love, hate, and I might as well say it—sex. It had

only been one year since I met her at a party in San Francisco. We fell in love with each other,

and then I was sentenced to paradise lost. This is not a fairy tale, but sometimes I wish that it

were. Ann-Marie, my wife, thought that I would never become a writer if I stayed in the United

States. I took the bait, just like the other black fish that ended up in Sweden for a lifetime: We

came. We saw, but did not conquer. I was at the beginning of the wings of madness. My head

would never be the same again. Looking back at the first time that I met Johnny Jackson, it

seemed odd hearing a black bus driver speaking English to his Swedish passengers. I was

traveling to my wife’s family home in the countryside of Stockholm. It was even more peculiar

when I discovered that he was an American.

I might add that he spoke to them in a tone that might have gotten his ass kicked, back in the bad

old U.S.A. , but this was passive Sweden. When were were twenty minutes into the countryside,

a young woman, obviously drunk, pulled down her panties and began peeing on the floor, right in

back of the buss where I was sitting. Silence pervaded the air. The bush drive spoke over the

microphone. “Goddamn baby, couldn’t you wait?” Hey! I was astonished, but my fellow bus

mates didn’t flinch. Actually they looked at the driver as if he were Little Black Sambo, one of

those black Americans that they watch on Swedish television when they view the plight of blacks

in America. “How did he get here?” They ask. Hoppas det ga bra for honom i Sverige. (Hope it

goes good for him in Sweden).

When all of the passenger got off. I moved to the front of the bus.

“Are you an american?” I asked, knowing full well that he was.

“Yeah, are you a homeboy?”

“You got that right.”

“That was weird thing the girl did,” I continued.

“Everyday shit my man. You must be new here?”

8-Mad Black Men and Swedes

We talked about the United States and Sweden. I could tell that he had not been home for a long

time because of the out-of-date Afro hairstyle that he sported. We exchanged telephone numbers

and promised that we would stay in touch. I never called him, but over the years I got to know

his story, as well as the others. He was from Columbia, South Carolina. Jackson had light skin,

curly red hair, shifty gray eyes, and freckles. He was about six feet tall and had a nervous

demeanor. Actually, he could have been a Burt Lancaster double. Where I come from he would

have been called Red. These red negroes are some mean bastards not to be fucked with.

He was a deserter from the Viet Nam War who stole some classified documents and turned them

over to the Russians, the first country that he fled to. He didn’t like it there. The black bread and

peasant soup was not to his liking. Sweden gave him another chance. Treason charges awaited

him if he ever returned to the United States.

Most of the anti-war deserters came to Sweden years before I arrived. Many were true to their

cause and I sympathized with their feelings. I might have ended up in the same boat, but faked

medical papers kept me out of that bloody mess. Of course there were some sham deserters who

were nothing more than your average run-of-the mill thugs—small time pimps and con artists.

They had to survive too. They never mingled with the artistic and intellectual art community, but

it didn’t matter: We were all in a country where we did not belong. Years later I saw Johnny in

the city park with his little daughter who was about four-years-old. I had heard through the

grapevine that he had settled down with a sambo (Swedish common-law wife). He looked very

proud when he introduced me to his daughter.

Personally I vowed that I would never have any Swedish brats who would grow up telling their

blonde mothers to kiss their half-black-ass and looked at their black fathers, many who had long

ago been kicked out of the house and country, as if they had escaped from an old Tarzan film.

No, there was no living with the mad women there. The men and women were so cold that when

they looked at you, the water in your eyes would freeze. In the winter, the streets were

transformed into a dead-ghost-like scene from an Edvard Munch painting.

9-Mad Black Men and Swedes

It is only in the summer that one gets a break from the Nordic despair. Tourists only see the

happy summer Swedes enjoying their six week vacations, and believe me, one needs six weeks

after those howling winter nights where the moon even cries. Yes, the women—Sweden’s most

known export, but a home they are really duds. How many nights did I wish for some good old

American pussy? “Get yourself a Finnish woman, Phil. At least they can scream.” That was

Ottman’s advice. The poet could say the most outrageous shit.

He should know. That kinky bastard has see it all. I was in the Systembolaget (Swedish State

liquor store) when I heard that Johnny had been arrested for murder. It was a Friday evening, the

last full open day to buy your headache before you try to fly over the cuckoo’s nest for the

weekend, knowing that by Monday, it was a hopeless flight. Get that booze now because they

open at 9 am. and close at 6 p.m., two o’clock on Saturdays. If you hit the bars after that, those

$10 pints of beer and $14 drinks will wipe you out.

On these Fridays, lines of people stand there with their tongues hanging to the floor watching

passively with numbers branded on their foreheads and hoping that the goddamn clerk would

hurry up and call their number. Wine Wine. Alcoholic bums are outside begging in the cold

winter darkness and more customers come crashing through the doors trying to beat the closing

time. What a mess. The electronic number machine says number 40. A happy face rushes to the

counter. “God kvail, vad vil du har? (Good evening. What will you have)? Winos in America’s

streets were happier that this bunch. At least they could buy a bottle of wine for a buck. This

must be Xanthous where one comes to the end of the world.

“Phil Turner,” shouted a voice out of the pandemonium. I looked around and it was Jimmy Love,

a saxophone player from Chicago. I waved at him and motioned to meet outside. I picked up my

five bottles of Portuguese white wine, and a security guard let me out of the joint.

“Nice to see you Jimmy. It’s been a long time.”

“Man, the last time I saw you Phil was at club Fasching when Don Cherry was playing. Boy, you

were stoned out of your mind.” “Yeah, I remember,” I lied.

10-Mad Black Men and Swedes

“Did you hear about Johnny Jackson?”

“What happened Jimmy?”

“Ottman called me and said that Johnny was in jail for axing his old lady 69 times.”

“No shit, only 69 times? That’s an interesting number, Jimmy.”

“Phil, you always have that fucked up sense of humor,” laughed Jimmy.

“It keeps me from committing suicide my brother.”

“Call Ottman, I am sure that big mouth can tell you more,” he ended as his wife pulled up in a

Jaguar. Boy, when you’re in, you’re in. Look at these motherfuckers staring at me, us, and Jimmy

in his shinny new Jaguar, driving something that the average Swede couldn’t dream of. Friday

night on a ghetto street corner in America would look very inviting right then.

As the pale faces passed me, I wondered if they were the walking dead. It was a cautious, furtive

kind of stepping. Every yard of darkness was ahead of me—the cold Nordic kind. I hailed a taxi

and headed for home. At the time, before the divorce, my wife and I lived on the south

side(Soder) of Stockholm. It was the bohemia quarter, not far from Oscar’s studio. There were

many cafes, bars, art galleries, and theaters that catered to the established and wannabes. Most

black American artists live in this area then. Many years ago it was a working class district, but

now it was solidly middle-class with pretensions of being proletarian. There were some moneyed

people living there too. My wife was one of them. She is a socialist with pengar, or peng

(money). Ann-Marie had a brilliant mind—far more superior than mine.

Her father owned about five clothing stores in Stockholm. She was an only child. They were

socialists too who never flaunted their wealth. The Olson’s accepted me into the family without

any reservations. I was an American prince as far as they were concerned. American blacks are

royalty in some parts of Europe. We dined with them at least once a month in their huge

apartment in Ostermalm (East Gate), the upper class district of the city. Other relatives would be

present at these typical Swedish dinners. The festivities were long and boring. Invariably

someone wanted to touch my nappy hair. “It’s soft,” one would say in amazement. It wasn’t a

briar patch after all.