I am going to tell you a story

Once upon a time...


I met and began to date a man very desirable, who was arrested and went to prison very shortly after the relationship started. I used to visit him on Saturday and Sunday mornings, having to wake up early after a night out on the piss, the drunkenness still in me. I remember the humiliation and the reverse pride of having to leave my bag in a safe, of walking through a metal detector with my shoes in my hand, of waiting in the visitors' room with the other visitors. I remember the visits themselves, sitting opposite each other, separated by glass not all that high - we could easily have touched each other over it, but there were guards keeping an eye at every row of tables. Once, without warning, he tossed me his necklace, strung with a collection of amulettes, over the glass. I doubt it was the common direction of smuggling. Another time, when I was leaving and already walking across the prison grounds, he had made it back into his cell quickly enough to shout and wave to me from the little window. It wasn't the window in my picture, but one just like it, and I know which one it was.

I came to my senses after a few months and stopped going to see him. When he was released, he called me for a while and was once waiting for me outside my house. I kept the necklace for years, unable to throw it out or return it, but I think I finally binned it in the big clear-out before moving to the tropics. He was in for multiple rape.

The prison was in the heart of old Helsinki. Since then, it has been closed down and the building converted into a - hotel. The other day, I went and sat outside on the terrace of the hotel bar, drank a glass of white wine, and thought of the various stories of my life. They only play Elvis Presley in the bar. I had a necrophiliac love for him when I was ten and he was just dead. I know every one of his songs intimately.