For myself, I was convinced that Grandpa was jockeying for membership in that last group … the engineidlers … it was pretty hard to remember everything he said … even though my memory’s real good …
— There were shylocks, buncos, and hypocrites … vitiators, vilifiers, and backsliders … cobblers, barghests, and dildomakers … pickpockets, dogooders, and castlestormers … firebrands, troglodytes, and manhandlers … neerdowells, have-nots, and hitmen … megastars, metalogicians, and abhumanists … linelickers, spurt-phantoms, and gymjunkies … lepers, elephantmen, and kuru-carriers … hydrophobicgeezers, bubonicplaguespreaders, and all sorts of cancers … There were nazis, sadists, and satanists … demiurges, vulcanists, and consulates … ophites, carpocratians, and paternines … Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven … Brahms, Händel, and Bruckner … Russians, Huns, and Turks … Helusians, Oxioners, and Finlanders … bushcrickets, shelljumpers, and auctioneers … pitworkers, bloodletters, and misanthropes … trendsetters, spoilsports, and livingfossils … princes of peace, masks of death, and objects of ridicule … sons-in-law, brothers-in-law, and miraclerabbis … There was Gobineau, Klages, and Evola … Ortega y Gasset, Jünger, and Pound … trailblazers, crackwhores, and bigtalkers … conjurers, foresters, and monsignors … matroses, monks, and miscreants … dockworkers, stevedores, and logjammers … torpedoes, duds, and moneygrubbers … captainsofindustry, electoralprinces, and royalpains … jugglers, inkslingers, and gladiators … loosecannons, cockmakers, and coppersmiths … friseurs, servitors, and masseurs … Rafael, Rembrandt, and Rops … Scorsese, Greenaway, and Kurosawa … rollingstones, bootleggers, and hobbyists … staggeringdrunks, flounderingfish, and eightysixedclerks … And many many more …
Grandpa took a fistful of snow to cool his burning mouth.
— Back then it was no big thing to be simple and chaste … or dull and brooding, if that’s how you wanted it …
— Must’ve been nice …
— Nothing doing … we trusted our luckystars … saw to ourselves … we were raciallypure and cleanshaven all over … we propagated with style and taste … slow and steady wins the race … We men knew how to enjoy each other … liked being together … there weren’t too many of us … five thousand at most …
Grandpa swallowed, he was having a hard time going on.
— But evil was brewing … something was coming … something that would destroy our world forever …
— Was it women?
— It was women! The inferior race! three openings! Snakeless crotches! … Darkness covered the land … troubling rumors reached us from the south, but no one believed them, at least not at first … They started down in Ume … something about longhaired creatures making land … spinning the heads of tried and true buttfuckers everywhere … of course, everyone thought the rumors were just cockandbull … balderdash … But as we were to find out, those stories held a terrible, grim reality …
His voice sunk even more.
— They spread like the plague … like gangrene … before long they’d reached the vicinity of Vindeln … between Trollberget and Häggnäs … they were sly … didn’t come up the coast via Bygdeå, Ånäset, and Lövånger … the shriekingbuggers there should’ve finished them off! But those inlandfüddies were too slow with the whip … we were used to having things our own way, no regular mealtimes … letting it all hang out … minding our own business … no curfews, no responsibilities … just whim and will and almighty nature … God in heaven, if only the coastguard had blown them out of the water! before it was too late … They spread to Pompej and Sirapsbacken … lamias and harpies had nothing on them … they got beneath our skin with gooeyeyedloveydoveyness … they made their way to Gorkuträsk … Lossmen … the picture was becoming clearer … stumpylegged, narrowshouldered, steatopygic monsters with repulsively swollen breasts … coldblooded and heartless as vipers … they’d swoon on command if they didn’t get their way … we tore at our hair! went about in a daze! pinched ourselves hard! How could respectable barbarians soil their cocks with that?!