"When I was a kid, I thought that snails changed shells." "I thought it was a beautiful idea, changing your home, your exterior." "The idea that your body wasn't linked to who you are." "I actually believed that up to now." "I never realized that all those empty shells were dead snails." "The first time I saw Eli, I was 17." "I saw him at a distance." "I was fascinated by his androgyny and his long red hair." "Finally, someone who dared to be more than just a boy or a girl." "He had a name for his rebellion:" "Boy Hag-Lady." "I think I'm in love." "I've cut down on my meds, so I might get some crazy ideas." "The theme is Gothic." "I was thinking of a dead tree." "I feel like one at times." "I wrote it as a metaphor in my journals when I was 16." "I compared my life to pruning a tree." "I would have to cut off certain parts of myself to make it work." "I've decided to invite a few people I love... and say goodbye to my youth." "Which has been hellish..." "And embrace the fate that awaits me." "Whatever it may be." "Youth is dead." "Here's to youth." "SHE MALE SNAILS" "We usually bathe together." "I work for Ericsson's IT Support, in an open-plan office." "I often suffer from anxiety;" "I'd been depressed for a long time." "I really didn't want to be medicated, but finally I felt I had no other choice." "I started taking antidepressants." "They make you feel weird in the beginning." "It was like people came out of posters and spoke to me." "I felt insane." "I kept having all these thoughts;" "I couldn't focus on my job." "It was like a monologue in my head." "I remember calling my doctor during my lunch break." "I got stronger sedatives, but they didn't help, so I took more than the dosage." "That didn't help either." "And I'm supposed to be a consultant!" "And felt I had no hope of a future." "I thought I would never be able to do anything else." "So I took sick leave." "A few weeks later, I saw some pictures of Saint Sebastian." "And I decided I wanted to be a writer." "I want to write about those beautiful dreams that never come true." "Do you want to see my collection?" "Do you know how snails screw?" "Lie down on the couch." "You can keep your underwear on." "You don't carry a lipstick anymore." "You have Oxazepam instead." "It seems to work the same, just a little simpler." "In the past when things got overwhelming, you would take out your emergency lipstick and paint your lips red." "And you could breathe again." "Sometimes you kept going and painted your whole face red." "Red." "You pretended you were blushing." "I am not from here." "Where I come from, you don't get raped at a party by some faggot." "Where I come from, people don't throw dog poop at you." "Where I come from, you don't wake yourself up screaming." "You don't puke after every meal." "And you're never weaker than the drunk macho guys." "Where I come from, you're never scared." "Where I come from, it's always springtime." "And the cherry trees are always in bloom." "And the sky is always white, white like a piece of paper." "Where I come from, you never long to be somewhere else." "I'm going to be worth something." "I'm going to be worth so much more." "I live near an industrial area." "Behind it is a big hill." "It's made of old garbage and excavation waste." "Out there, near the incineration plant, the air seems cleaner." "I dream of meeting Eli, the Boy Hag-Lady." "He'll save me from this two-gender world." "I searched for him for years, but didn't have the guts to contact him." "Finally, I found him on the Internet." "Eli had written a description of himself:" ""One day Boy Hag-Ladies will rule the world."" "I thought it was very touching." "And one day we met at the station." "We talked." "I couldn't find the right words." "And I had a strong feeling inside me." "I thought we ought to be friends." "I wanted to get physically close to him and talk." "I couldn't get closer;" "it was frustrating." "We went separate ways in the subway." "And then I moved away to Malmo." "He survived school." "Basketball." "Take That." "Jerking off." "A finger sneaks into Sebastian's ass." "One of the jocks'." "Pine trees outside the window." "The teacher smells of gender." "Pancakes." "A shower room." "He locks himself in." "His classmates hose him down." "Cole slaw." "A jock presses him up against the toilet." "He feigns a jab." "Laughingly." "Friday the 13th." "Math." "History." "One of the jocks pees in the dust." "It splashes onto his legs." "Everything seems to penetrate Sebastian." "A fork in the knee." "A tongue in his ear." "His endless happiness seen through blurred vision." "All this is freedom in a box." "I was 17, and a dropout." "I had sort of an identity crisis." "I longed to belong somewhere." "I longed for change, both external and internal change." "A sort of rebirth." "A mutant, a super hero." "A girl with breasts and a cock." "I felt that I was bullied a lot, because of my femininity, and my androgyny." "But that was just a natural part of me." "That was when I broke up with the love of my life." "I pulled away from my dad." "I wanted to break free of males." "I started to hang out with feminists." "I felt very inspired by Ulrika Dahl, who was a feminist activist." "She spoke of reclaiming your femininity." "And that's when I decided to go all out with my androgyny." "I started dressing girlishly or ladylike." "The femininity became sort of my rage." "My way of giving the finger to other people's expectations." "We're heading for a party." "I haven't seen Eli for years, and we just made out for the first time." "We pass some guys, who whistle at us." "We head for the bridge that leads into town." "We're both happy." "Then we sense that the guys are following us." "I can see a pink polo shirt in the corner of my eye." "I start thinking of fancy cakes." "Beautiful, fancy cakes with cherries and whipped cream." "One of the guys calls out:" ""Hey, sweetheart, hold up!"" "I feel the energy buzzing, how angry they are at being ignored." "I grab Eli's arm." "And I wish that everything would just disappear." "Bam!" "Down we go." "One of them kicks me, another hits Eli in the head." "My knee is bleeding." "One of them finds a rock the size of a heart." "He squeezes it in his hand." ""I'm going to count to three." "If you're not running, I'll bash your heads in."" ""One, two, three."" "We run." "We emerge at the bridge that overlooks the city." "We sit down on a bench, the taste of blood in our mouths." "It is a clear, crisp evening in December." "Our breath turns to mist." "And there we are, two lesbian boys. 4 ever." "Eli visits me in Malmo." "I meet him at the Central Station." "He has cut his long hair." "He's wearing a cap, a black leather jacket, and a stubbly beard." "At my place, he shows me something he wrote." "Continuous run-on sentences, written in Notepad." "He tells me it's going to be a book." "We have our first bath together." "It feels great, the steam dissolving away my edges." "I'm floating." "Eli wants to find a way of being that will work in real life." "And I think that two Boy Hag-Ladies are twice as many as one." "It's like in the book when Sebastian thinks that the world becomes magical." "That's how I see life." "Especially when I'm alone." "That the boundaries between the inner and outer world fade." "You're simply blown away by the incredible beauty of the world." "It's not always pleasant, or cozy." "But real beauty can give you an experience of... reality being broken into pieces." "You get a glimpse" "of something that's bigger than you." "It's something that...changes whoever experiences it." "In the book it is described as meeting another body." "I really hated guys." "I thought it was disgusting." "Sometimes I slept with some guy." "But the only thing I wanted from them was sex." "They became kind of...faceless." "Out of those encounters...came words." "Words that turned into texts." "It was as if this danger, this uncertainty..." "It was somehow like a path to the real me." "The violence became a path into me." "I really wanted to die." "But then I decided to write this." "It seemed like a better idea." "So I felt that this book was going to be a memorial stone, a funeral for who I was." " The Boy Hag-Lady, or...?" " Yes." "I didn't want the old Boy Hag-Lady to just disappear." "It seemed so strange that I wouldn't be able to see him in the mirror." "Has the Boy Hag-Lady disappeared altogether?" "Do you feel that you've left her, or it, or him, behind?" "Is that what you want?" "I'm not dead yet." "Definitely!" "I'm not dead yet, and I'm glad as hell about that." "And I'm glad that I'm glad that I'm not dead yet." "Funny how a breaking heart can make me start to say:" "What good is my life?" "Funny how I often think - to think I'll never find another dream in my life." "Till I look around and see." "This great big world is part of me and my life." "This is my life!" "Today, tomorrow love will come and find me." "But that's the way I was born to be." "This is me, this is me." "This is my life!" "And I don't give a damn for lost emotions." "I've got such a lot of love to give." "Let me live!" "Let me live!" "It's my life!" "And I don't give a damn for lost emotions." "This is my life!" "I'm tired of sitting in this damn bathtub." "I..." "The Boy Hag-Lady was just a way to put a name on the horrible loneliness and worthlessness of just being a failure." "A failure as a boy, and a failure as a girl." "A failure as a human being." "It gave me the strength to choose to choose who I was." "But I don't think you really can do that." "It's..." "I feel that you sometimes hope that I'll be more... someone with sharp nails that you can drive into people." "Yes." "I'm not going to deny that I probably was desperate to find a sister." "And that made me sad." "I can be your... your partner in crime, but not your sister." "I love you for all that you are." "I feel good about that." "That sometimes you're the little boy, the super femme... and the transvestite, and the asshole." "That's why I like you." "Not because you're a Hag-Lady." "I just woke up from a feverish dream." "With my make-up smeared on my face and a headache." "I carefully wash my silicone bra pads." "My breasts." "They bob up and down in the lukewarm water." "For a moment I'm not sure if they're really a part of me." "I wrap them in a towel." "When I put them back in my bra, I feel I'm home." "I wonder how people see me." "I want to make it clear that I'm neither male nor female." "I want to make it clear that I don't know who I am, and that's fine."