It was Midsummers Eve, the great heathen celebration of the fallic shape of Scandinavia, and Ellinor was invited by a friend to a small backyard party in a somewhat shady suburb for beer and some kind of grilled, or rather charred, meat referred to only as “fleisch”.
She wasn’t used to socializing with humans and got off on the wrong foot already when she before leaving home realized she hated almost all of her clothes and couldn’t get into the ones she still liked because she had gained too much weight during her recent months under the surface in a low mood cycle of her undiagnosed bipolar-like syndrome.
The people at the party were very nice. But she found herself thinking mostly about her writing, how she was losing so many hours of writing time, how this extra day off from work could have yielded at least a thousand words.
The music was good, mostly metal, but she thought about the poor neighbours having to live with the hosts speakers and hifi-system. The speakers were so tall that she could stand straight next to one and rest her nose on the top of it.
The beer made her tired and the boys in charge of food had only bought the fleisch and some candy to eat. Only. A smörgåsbord of meat, candy and beer. And vodka of course, this was taking place in Sweden, on Midsummer’s Eve, what do you expect?
Some time after midnight, still dressed in clothes she hated, she excused herself and caught a late bus home. No fertility rituals or sexual celebrations for her this year. No dancing around the midsummer pole. The closest thing was a faint hint of fetish feeling for the black rain jacket she wore to not freeze to death while waiting for the bus.
When she finally got home she quickly fell asleep without flowers under her pillow as tradition usually edicts. And so another year passes without carnality. It’s all good. Her vow to be a writer-nun still valid. Well, except that one time just before Christmas. Oh, and the thing this spring. Damn. Neither of them counts!