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Stockholm was no place to be somebody, especially if one is black, and Phil Lawson is an African American in Sweden. Maybe the climate had something to do with his and other black American expatriates. Perhaps it was the utter lack of communication between anyone there--black or white. Everyone seemed to be caught in a triangle of love, hate, and sex. It had only been one year ago when he met "her" at a party in San Francisco.He fell in love and was sentence to paradise lost. This is not a fairy tale, but sometimes he wished that it were. Ann-Marie, his wife thought that he would never become a writer if he stayed in America. He took the bait, just like the other black fish that ended up in Sweden. They came. They saw, but they did not conquer. It was the wings of madness that passed over them.The insanity of Sweden and the Swedes drove them nuts. When Lawson first arrived the African Americans even suspected him of being a CIA agent, something that he found quite amusing in all respects. Most of them were anti-war deserters who came to Sweden years before Lawson arrived. Many were sham deserters, run-of-the mill thugs, small time pimps, and con artists. They never mingled with the black artistic and intellectual community, but it did not matter: They were all in a country where they did not belong.And when they were transported to zero land, the change was chilling. The one hundred or so black American who live in Stockholm were the usual mix of clowns, artists, and con artists--the American apple pie personified. They all longed for soul food in a Scandinavian igloo that only served "pittypanna" Swedish hash.
Citation preview
Jerry Harris
Mad Swedes and Black Men
A Novel
Blackswede Press San Francisco
Copyright © 2009 by Jerry Harris, nee Gerald HarrisAll Rights Reserved
Electronically Manufactured in the United States of America
TOBritt-Marie Olofsson-Harris
I have seen the wings of madness pass over me Charles Baudelare
Harris-5 Mad Swedes
Chapter One
“Do they have people in Sweden?” asked my sister’s four-year-old son. “Leave your
Uncle Phil alone Jarred. He’s trying to watch the evening new,” shouted my sister from
her upstairs bedroom. “It’s okay Beverly. There is nothing on right now.” I told my
nephew that there were is indeed people living in Sweden. Maybe they were not like us,
but there is a race of men and women called Swedes. I didn’t fail to mention that there
were also some black people living there too—and they were not like anyone else either.
My sister took her son up to his room and put him to bed. I was back to my “boogie”
roots. That’s the way black American short cut the word bourgeois. Americans, black or
white, should stay away from pronouncing French words. Yes, home again, this time
broke, but not busted. I was trying to jump-start my literary life again. My face bore the
mark 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. It was nice to
be home again after living in Sweden for so many years.
I was staying with my younger sister and her husband who worked nights as a special
police officer. They lived in a new town house in Germantown, Maryland—down the
beltway from Washington, DC. The view from the man-made lake across from their
house assured me that they had a piece of the American pie. It was all the same old
shit—you eat it. Life is a bitch and a motherfucker too.
Harris-6 Mad Swedes
Even though they were middle-class African 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. The living room
reflected their good taste in African art, and on the wall hung two unique paintings by
Romare Bearden. The well-stocked bar was at my disposal. I sat there with a bottle of
vodka that stood on the Danish teakwood coffee table. I was surprised that the sofa
was from Ikea, the epitome of Swedish and socialist simplicity.
