(All persons are over 18 years old!)

Suomi, my love

I.

The whirring of the gears in idle mixes with the crunch of the pebbles under his tires. Arho slowly lets himself roll down the gentle hill towards the happy screaming of the children. Slanted rays of the sun break through the branches of the birch trees. There is a pleasant coolness under the trees. The soft blue sky stretches across their crowns, streaked with white; as bright and wide as Arho has never seen in any other country.

He looks at the little cloud of dust that his tires throw up on the gravel road. Haze dances in the yellow rays of the sun.

In this country everything seems to be more intense; the air clearer; the sky bluer; and even the rays of the sun are as yellow as on children’s drawings.

The path describes a curve; Peace is in the air; everything is gentle and soft.

“Am I still touching the ground?” asks Arho, feeling the sea on his cheeks.

Few cars park on the side of the road. Occasionally people walk between the trees on their way to weathered wooden huts. The campsite is only sparsely visited.

Across the street, the trees give way to large granite rocks. Red with white spots. Small bonsai-like plants grow on them in adventurous places. As Arho rolls along them, he can see the sea through gaps.

The rock wall comes to an end and gives way to the beach, opposite the entrance to the campsite.

At this entrance to the sea, a small wooden house was built on the rocks, kiosk and beach guard at the same time. Some pale, chubby children crowd in front of the sales window to receive gummy coins and ice cream. Their small sweaty bodies dusted with sand, and unhealthily pale against the dark wood. Wood so lively and warm that Arho wants to touch it. Would like to hear what it has to say about all the winters that it has spent alone and unnoticed on this beach, and about the summers with the sticky children’s hands.

One of the boys stands on tiptoe and greedily stretches his arms up to take the next bag of candy. Blue anchors can be seen on his white swimming trunks.

A figure leans out of the window towards the boy, the coveted sweets in a paper bag. Messy flax-blonde hair falls into a suntanned forehead.

“Can you look more Nordic?” asks Arho. Brakes, gets off the bike, and locks it to one of the street lamps that have been set up at this lonely crossing in the forest. That weathered wood again. Dark with gray, brittle spots. Arho gently strokes the old tree trunk to which the lamp was attached. Resin remains on his fingertips and he raises his hand to smell them as he turns toward the beach entrance. Sweetness rises in his nose. When he looks up, his gaze falls on the figure in the sales window. Blue, almost white eyes rest on him. He quickly drops his hand in embarrassment, feels as if he has been watched doing an indecent act.

The salesman stands upright and quiet, in the midst of the noisy children, in his kiosk, which is enthroned on a rock. As Arho stumbles down the path to the beach, he feels his gaze burn on the back of his neck.

After a few steps, Arho has reached the small beach and can now feel the cool sea breeze on his skin, which has been heated from driving, unhindered by trees and rocks. The t-shirt sticks to his back. There are only two families and a few individuals on this remote beach.

He looks for a place next to a rock, sheltered from the wind, takes off his shirt, puts it over the stone, sits down in the coarse sand, and leans against the warm rock with his eyes closed.

“Hmm, how pleasant. How is it that everything feels so much more peaceful in summer? Surely as many disasters happen as on any other day. Well, it doesn’t really matter. Not here, and not now.”

Arho opens his eyes again and squints at the light that breaks on the istanbul travesti prancing water surface. A shadow falls on him for a moment as the chubby boy with the anchors, lost in thought rummaging in his candy bag, trots back to his mother.

Arho takes off the old timberlands and digs his toe in the warm sand.

“It’s not nice to think that, but it’s good that David didn’t get a vacation, not so soon. I don’t know if I could enjoy this with him. Not like that.”

He lets himself sink back against the rock and crosses his arms behind his head.

“David, oh David, what am I going to do with you? I can hear the love in your voice! But do I want that? Am I ready to get involved again? To invest? To adapt and adjust to you? And then to be crushed again after all?”

A couple of children storm screaming towards the cool water. Arho opens his eyes and watches as they happily splash fountains of water on all sides as they run towards the deeper part.

“Gays just can’t hold out! When you get to the real part of a relationship, they think boredom has broken out, and they’re off to new horizons. I know that’s society. But gays still have to exaggerate that. Be a tad more fashionable, a bit more tanned and pumped up. And a little more reckless. So many men, so little time! Why bother? Why stick with it? Why, damn shit, not just sit on your well-toned asses and wait, instead of always demanding mindless actionism?”

The children have reached the deep water and throw themselves into the sea with one last cry of joy. Light blue, green and white blend gently and wildly.

“Green as your eyes, gentle as your voice. And I have clichés in my head, and wild fear.”

Arho pinches his eyes until the bright sky and the glittering water blur into glaring rays, like on cheap pictures of saints. He looks over to the now deserted kiosk and gets up on a sudden impulse.

“The only question is, whether I am afraid of the pain you will inflict on me, or of the possibility of my love for you!”

Arho slowly walks the short distance to the rock on which the kiosk is, climbs the first step of the wooden staircase that leads to the sales window, stops hesitantly, and turns towards the sea. In the distance the heads of the swimming children can be seen in the water.

“Am I afraid of you or of me?”

II.

The warmth of the day has built up in the small room despite the open windows. Sampo mumbles soft curses to himself while he counts from a large bulbous glass of gummy coins into a bag.

“Is it the thalers, or is it my hands that are so damn sticky?”

He sticks a finger in his mouth to get rid of the sweet residue. The sea wind blows wearily through his disheveled hair.

While he is folding the brown bag with a crackle, he sees a tall, skinny boy walking by from the corner of his eye and sitting on a bench a little to one side on the porch.

“Ah! The stupid Topi sneaks past!”

Sampo looks through the shelves full of candy glasses.

“Or my dear Topi! Depends on how you take it. Today like that, tomorrow like that. But not with me. Definitely not with me!”

He puts the bag on the work surface and turns to the freezer. He takes a quick look out of the window at the same, always different sea. A sight that is so familiar to him with his age of 19, and yet, in addition to home, always means longing for him. For him, too, the promising future lies beyond the horizon. On the other side of the sea lies the promised land. Sampo feels a lump in his throat as he tries to see something in the distance past the last visible island, which is densely overgrown with fir trees. He doesn’t know what to look for, a sign maybe. A sign that tells him what to do with Topi. But there is nothing to be seen except water, waves, and an angler in his old wooden boat. With a heavy istanbul travestileri sigh, Sampo pushes the lid of the freezer to the side, to look for the desired ice cream.

“Why is Topi coming here? He knows very well that I don’t want to talk to him! Not until he has made up his mind. Basta!”

The cool air that rises from the chest is pleasant. Sampo feels as if the hairs on his arms are starting to crackle.

“Topi! We have known each other since elementary school! Everyone knows that we are best friends. Is it really that difficult to say that we are more than friends? Hey guys, take a closer look! Don’t you see that I love Sampo, that I want to grow old with him, and now get away from this dump! Tell it Topi, say it.”

Sampo emerges from the freezer again, closes the lid, and turns to the open sales window. But not without a quick look at Topi.

“Haven’t you had enough of hiding? Isn’t it too cramped for you here too? Tell them that you are going to Helsinki with me because you are my friend. Towards a new life. That’s all I ask for. Be strong for once! Have the courage to face your parents once. Don’t always let me do everything alone! Topi, my beautiful Topi!”

Sampo takes the bag to hand it down to the eagerly waiting boy. As he leans out of the window, his gaze falls on a stranger who is getting off his bicycle to hook it up to the street lamp opposite. A tourist, maybe an Englishman. White t-shirt, shorts, sailing shoes.

When Sampo sits up again and looks at the man’s hairy legs, he becomes very still. A restless silence, as if something was pulling on him, or as if he would get an answer if he only listened carefully enough. But Sampo only hears the blood rushing in his ears.

The man locks the bike to the lantern, and Sampo looks on, breathless and astonished, as he runs his hand over the dirty lamppost.

Sampo is fascinated by the beauty of the gesture, and the man’s hand. Without a word for it, he wishes that hand would stroke his body with the same tenderness. Safe and undeterred, as Topi never was. Sampo hardly dares to swallow, he is so captivated by this moment. Hearing neither the noise of the children, nor the rolling waves, nor the wind with its eternal promise from distant lands.

As the man turns to go to the beach his eyes meet Sampo’s. And Sampo wants nothing more than that this man takes him with him. Whatever country he came from, just get away from here. Away from the narrowness, away from hiding, and away, yes, from what?

He looks after the man, walking down the path to the beach, and suddenly feels an angry rise within himself. Anger, like blazing flames, and he has to blink to drive away the tears. Anger at the longing this strange man has triggered in him; Anger at Topi, who is afraid of the truth and his parents; Anger at the stuffy Finland, where men are allowed to marry but are still beaten up if they do. He quickly casts a glance at Topi, who is sitting bored in the sun and is rocking with his bare legs. Sampo would love to scream. Just scream something, no matter what. But he cannot move.

III.

Topi doesn’t actually want to go to the beach, but it seems to be the natural way for him. Known for years, gone every day in the summer to work with Sampo in the kiosk or to help out on the campsite. He has only avoided the area in the past few days, only since Sampo got so weird with his ideas of freedom and truth. It felt strange not being there. There in his familiar place by Sampo’s side. Strange and empty, and Topi hadn’t known what to do with himself. So he sat on his parents’ veranda, brooding over the days, and understood neither what was gnawing at him, nor what was expected by Sampo, from him and from life. What should he do?

And then he went back on his way without having come to a conclusion, because travesti istanbul he wasn’t even clear about the question. It asked him to see Sampo, to fool around with him as usual, to feel the sun and the little hidden touches of his friend.

Topi trudges lazily and sullenly along the dusty path to the beach. He listlessly kicks a small stone out of the way, his hands buried deep in his trouser pockets.

“I don’t even know what he wants, with his eternal ‘You have to tell your parents’. He’s probably crazy! They beat me as soft as a diaper! We always had it nice! And that’s nobody’s business what’s between us. Least of all my parents. Well, they would definitely not be happy!”

A man on a bicycle slowly rolls past Topi.

“That would be something, if I came home and said, ‘Pa, do you know that Sampo is basically my girlfriend?’ He wouldn’t understand what I’m saying if I’m lucky. And if he did, there would be lashes with the old leather belt that I would never forget my entire life. I know how he is, the old man! And when he then throws me out of the house, what then? Hmm Sampo, what should I do then?”

When Topi turns the last bend and the raised kiosk on the rocks comes into view, he feels uncomfortable again.

“And then always this talk about Helsinki! Does he no longer like our city? In Helsinki there are drugs and thieves, and you can’t safely go out on the streets in the evening. We have everything here! Well, I want to grow old here. Let him go to Helsinki after all, he’ll see what he’s got out of it! He’ll become a drug addict and end up unemployed under a bridge. Then he’ll come back to me. But if I still want him, I’ll think twice.”

Topi has to swallow hard at the thought that Sampo would really leave him here, as beautiful as his hometown is. And he walks on with his head bowed, his hands clenched so tightly in his trouser pockets, as if his strength could change something in Sampo’s intentions.

When he reached the entrance to the beach, he caught up with the cyclist who was just connecting his bike to the old street lamp. And he sees his friend upstairs in the kiosk, who doesn’t seem to pay any attention to him, but only has eyes for the stranger. He almost follows his impulse to turn around, to go away, far away, never to see Sampo again; Sampo, who has apparently already forgotten him; so much the sight of the friend’s eyes pained him as he sees them resting on the strange man.

But he apparently slips unnoticed up the wooden stairs and sits on a bench in front of the kiosk to watch the situation.

“I’m going to be late! Sampo has already forgotten me and is throwing himself at others. But that one should come up here and put his hands on Sampo! I’ll beat him up! Just travel to foreign countries, and take away one’s friend. He’ll see what’s in store for him!”

So Topi sits on the bench in the bright sun, alternately looking at his friend who is busy inside the kiosk and at the stranger who has taken the path to the beach. His fear of losing Sampo mixes with the anger that this has apparently already taken place. And his thoughts spin or skip, just like his heart, and the sweat runs down his back.

And he looks at his friend through the reflective windows and wants to hug him with all his strength. So hard. So firmly that he can never leave him and does not go to Helsinki or anywhere else. Instead, to stay with him and to love him, as before, and always, and always, that must not be destroyed! Sampo, don’t you see that too? And then his father’s face appears in his mind’s eye, and his stomach spasms. But he now knows very well that he loves Sampo and must not lose him.

“Then they should all know! I don’t care if he just takes me back!”

That much is clear to Topi now, but what should he do? And there he sits with clenched teeth and he feels like he’s about to hit someone, no matter who or why. Just get out with the strength, so that he can finally breathe again and everything doesn’t spin. And the sun burns down on him as he watches as the strange man walks up to the kiosk, and steps onto the first step.