The Culture Club

An assignment with a client comes to an end. A romance loses momentum.

Have more time.

Join a club for culture. Dance, opera and other things.

I remember a thought that the Royal Opera would become my home turf. But it hasn’t turned out that way. I haven’t seen anything since a Christmas concert ten years ago.

The Rite of Spring by Stravinsky. Front row. Our faces are just below the level of the stage. Our eyes could have been one more nervous element for the ones playing. But nobody is wearing a skirt. The men wear suits. Standard for the girls is long black trousers, a black top and a sheer, see-through fabric over the arms.

Study their faces, go from one to the next. Wonder if you can tell that they are musicians. If you can tell that they live in Stockholm.

Sometimes after a more intense passage one of the players sends a smile to another who plays the same instrument. The other confirms and looks down at the score. The percussionists have long pauses. The violinists considerably shorter ones.

Higher up on the balconies they look more polished than we do. A smile from the conductor or a piece that goes on unexpectedly long makes them smile. We down by the stage are on the same page too.

We are six people who don’t know each other but sit together. The tickets are free. Don’t know exactly how the club works.

We talk tentatively in the interval and after the performance. The others go on somewhere. Not me.

But only a few days later I have a ticket to Dansens Hus and see Theatre of Dreams. We are eight people. Some I know from last time.

The performance does something to us and afterwards I come along to Bar Oas and drink wine and then a taxi to Bambi on Södermalm. The bar is close to where I’m soon moving into my new apartment and I think I might as well get on good terms with the people in the area from the start. So I stay behind with the staff when the others have left and talk after closing.

On Thursday I think the same thing. Best to establish myself in the area. I just have to fit in some babysitting at Mariatorget, then we go to Maran bar, which is quietly opening on Ringvägen. We finish at Duvan, where we stay behind locked doors until four in the morning playing charades.

When I wake up I tell myself that everything is fine. I have less to do right now.

That same evening Melancholia is on at the Opera. I have also recommended my friend G to the club and learn that he is now a member. Eight tickets have gone out to members, one of them to me and one to G.

When my friend calls in the afternoon to ask what to wear he sounds worryingly drunk. I tell him that if he has already started drinking he should take it easy until we meet the others. I know he takes offence. As if I’m saying he makes me look worse.

The call I get an hour before we meet outside the Opera doesn’t suggest it has had any effect, and when we meet in Kungsträdgården he is the only one talking. I try, but feel I don’t have much to say.

“You could at least take it a little piano,” I say.

We meet up with the others. A couple of them I have met before. I introduce my friend and want the time until the performance to go faster.

I tell myself I’m exaggerating, but in my eyes my friend is taking it anything but piano. He is in the others’ ears and it is a two-way communication where he talks and the others ask what it is he is saying.

I breathe and tell myself he can hardly be the first person to be drunk at the Opera. But I still think I can see that the others are bothered.

As we walk down towards the second row of the stalls he says in my ear that he has had too much.

After the first act we head for the bar and G joins the queue. I continue up to the Golden Foyer instead and go out alone and stand on the terrace. Another view of Stockholm. A temporary break in the rain. The Royal Palace on the other side. Couples in their seventies who are also getting some air.

After a few breaths I get a bad conscience and call G. I say we’ll meet in the Golden Foyer.

The others are standing there too, in a circle.

I briefly join the queue for the Golden Foyer bar but step out of it. Stand outside the circle and have to ask them to let me in so that I become part of it.

The man standing next to me, whom I have talked to before in the club, has some dirt on his forehead. It looks like a small piece of bird shit. Maybe he has been outside too. Nobody else seems to acknowledge it. But I can’t be the only one who sees it.

Recall a lunch with an investor who had got sauce on his lambswool sweater. Everyone saw it then too. I was the one who told him. It improved our relationship. Also remember a drinks reception with a book publisher and his staff where I stood looking at a long piece of snot that had stuck to one of his nostrils. It hung down a centimetre and refused to let go. None of his staff said anything. That time I didn’t say anything either. That reception ended quickly.

I tell the man he has got some shit on his forehead. I don’t say the word bird shit.

He touches it with his finger, then looks at the finger and is more upset than I expected. Runs off to the toilet. When he comes back we don’t talk.

The others want to head back to their seats for the second act.

“Hell, I thought it was over,” my friend says in my ear.

I say that he and the others can go ahead.

The queue for the bar in the Golden Foyer is now empty. The last ones walk out.

I buy a glass of white wine that I have to hurry with because the bells are ringing. Queue for the toilet, hear the bells ring for the second and third time, finish the wine inside the toilet and am among the last ones back before the second act begins.

It is better than the first. The sheltered, bourgeois world on stage is struck by a threat from the universe. The dimensions become clear and I can feel something inside me expand. When the percussionists strike louder and louder I let out an audible sigh.

Afterwards we walk to Gyllene Freden and then Södermalm.

I am tired and end up a few steps behind while my friend G entertains the others and makes them laugh. He has now made several friends.

I have already started setting my mind on going to the gym tomorrow.

Stay until closing anyway, as compensation for having been grumpy.

Because I have time to be bothered at the Opera.