At dinner last night out in the stinking rich suburbs of Stockholm with the guy from the Goethe Institute and his husband, the South African publicist, we somehow got cajoled into gossiping.



"Everyone loves gossip, you can't believe anyone who says they don't," the South African publicist said. And he's right, of course. He gleefully, guiltily said that not only does he love gossip, he is completely unable to keep it to himself, mentioning an incident with a politician, tailored shirts, and someone else's boyfriend.



My own husband is actually full of first-hand celebrity gossip; he's quite respectful of privacy and rarely mentions any of it to anyone, including me. And yet, among other things, when asked by the publicist he answered that so-and-so t.v. personality is not gay, which disappointed our hosts. But the disappointment was immediately quelled when it was revealed that at least so-and-so t.v. personality has a big dick.



"Wait, but if he's not gay, how do you know that?" asked the publicist.



The husband replied that the information came from trusted and reliable female, uh, sources.



"You know, " said the publicist, "if it's such a burden carrying these celebrity secrets around, you should just tell me. I'm from South Africa and I don't even know who any of these people are and who am I going to tell?"



Who says homosexualists are shallow and interested in only one thing?



We were, in fact, utterly charmed by the two of them.



The Swedish word for the day is skvaller. It means, naturally, gossip.



- by Francis S.

I bet my family beats your family. If we're talking numbers, that is.



You see my parents both grew up on farms in Iowa, not 15 miles from one another, born at a time - 1934 - when it still made sense for farmers to grow their own farmhands. And so my mother has three sisters and six brothers. And my father has three sisters and six brothers. Which makes 18 aunts and uncles who are blood relations.



Then, each of these aunts and uncles got married at some point, which means that I have 36 aunts and uncles. Well, had 36 aunts and uncles; the number is dwindling, sadly, inevitably. And then each of my aunts' and uncles' families consists of an average of 4.27 children. Which means I have 77 first cousins. There are cousins who are opera singers, cousins who are preachers, cousins who are mayors and cousins who are garbage men. There are cousins who home-school their children (and shouldn't!) and cousins who are ex-cons. There is even at least one cousin who is a fellow avowed homosexualist (he's had kind of a tough time of it, though, poor guy.)



As for the next generation, I couldn't begin to count. We're talking more students than attended my junior high school. We're talking the population of a small town. Hundreds and hundreds. And we're not even Catholic.



I'd make a crack about whether this fecundity has any relation to improper use of prophylactics and low intelligence quotients, but I've recently learned that my parents read these pages and I don't want to offend anyone.



The Swedish word for the day is kaniner. It means rabbits.



- by Francis S.

Grownup girly-boy that I am, there are still places stinking of testosterone that send fear neurons bouncing from synapse to synapse throughout my body. Places like barbershops with red and white twirling barberpoles. Or the locksmith and model railway shop that used to be on 14th just above P Street in Washington.



The problem with these places is that I suddenly revert back to being nine years old, and I can't help thinking that I am a pathetic excuse for a male and that I will be the last one picked for the team (or if we're going to judge by history, second-to-last). I worry that I will be found out, somehow. So, I loathe these places. My soul cannot be convinced that no one is going to refuse to give me a haircut, or a new set of keys, because I don't pass the male test. Whatever that may be.



Are there equivalent estrogen- and progesterone-laden locations that have the same effect on you female-types?



The Swedish word for the day is manlig. It means masculine.



- by Francis S.

Miguel is the bee's knees.



I asked him to say "hi" to America from me when he was doing the whole family visit thing in the States, and he got America to say "hi" back.



The Swedish phrase for the day is du är en klippa, Mig. It means you are a rock, Mig, in the best way.



- by Francis S.

Happy birthday, dear diary, you demanding old thing.



Considering the day, I suppose it's only appropriate to acknowledge its geneology and give credit to the parent who inspired it, that pithy and fascinating potential pornstar who is Jonno, sadly now on hiatus.



The Swedish phrase for the day is ett år gammal. It means one year old.



- by Francis S.

This is a good year for mushrooms. Not that I know from personal experience. I've never actually hunted for mushrooms. It sounds so Hansel- and Gretel-ish. So Baba Yaga-ish. So very Brothers Grimm. And while I would dearly love to hunt mushrooms in a dim forest somewhere, I haven't, but at least I'm reaping the benefits of someone who has.



The husband is standing over the sink with a brush and big bowl of golden chanterelles that a friend gave him, gently ridding them of the remnants of the dirt they grew in.



Wait, no, now he's cooking them in butter.



The smell would be intoxicating, if we weren't still recovering from being intoxicated last night. The husband's marvelous agent invited us to dine at Pontus by the Sea. One definitely doesn't eat at Pontus by the Sea, one dines. And has bottle after bottle of very expensive champagne, apparently. And talks about how it wasn't long ago - ten years - that one could still find apartments in Stockholm where one's toilet was in a separate building out back. And smokes cigarettes even though one hasn't had a cigarette in weeks and weeks. And then when the last lamb chop is stripped clean and the final drop of espresso drunk and the last remnant of cherry tart scraped from the plate, one takes more bottles of champagne and glasses and drunkenly plays boule, the grand old buildings of the old town on one side, and on the other the waters of Stockholm harbor, black under a sickle moon. I don't remember who won.



It turns out that chanterelles cooked with onions in butter are quite good for a hangover.



The Swedish word for the day is, of course, kantareller, which means chanterelles.



- by Francis S.

I had lunch earlier this week with the guy from the Goethe Institute, one of my fellow students from the Swedish class I took earlier in the summer. He told me that he doesn't understand the Swedes.



"I've lived in South Africa, in Romania, in the States," he said. "I could basically figure them all out. But the Swedes - "



They are an enigma to him. He said he can't figure out what makes them tick.



"Some guy, a Swede, said to me once that Sweden is what America would be like if it were socialist," the guy from the Goethe Institute said. "Now that made sense to me somehow."



I didn't tell him that while George W. Bush would never admit it, the U.S. is in fact rather socialist around the edges. Still, the idea of Sweden as a socialist version of America makes sense to me, too.



The Swedish word for the day is skär. It means pink.



- by Francis S.