Fake sugar

“Swing your partner, do-si-do,

You’re looking good in a sugar coat”

Beth Ditto

I.

Like all the legendary stories told at awkward dinner parties, this one began long before any of us started studying in Copenhagen. 

It is because a long time ago in our quarter, where I started to live with Jas, there used to be a gigantic sugar factory. It produced enormous sugar loaves, and later, at the brink of the century when the fashion changed, simple elegant sugar cubes. The factory walked hand in hand with the eventual progress of the ages, with the emergence of diabetes and various illnesses well-known today; it initiated the production of artificial sweeteners. Then it closed, almost 30 years ago, not needed anymore: people began to prefer healthy lifestyles and they replaced sugar in gulrotkake with honey. Nobody cared about la dolce vita anymore, furthermore, green activists decided (or as politicians prefer to say, alas, it is the people who have decided), that the area of the factory might as well be appropriately used for new social housing. The fate of the factory has been sealed. The demolition has commenced with impressive pace, functional government and functional state speeding up the entire process, and the tall chimneys of the factory met the fate of all buildings that become enemies of what is termed as necessary progress. 

As I said, although the factory does not exist for almost 30 years, sometimes, at the sunset, in certain moments, when the border between beauty and vanity, good and evil, is especially thin, the inhabitants of social housing (which, by the way, have been awarded by an exceptional architectural price for original and mesmerising design) claim that in the air, you could almost sense a delicate, nearly invisible scent of processed sugar. 

Of course, you could dismiss the story as nonsensical and “people say this, people say that” trash, but it was absolutely necessary to comprehend what followed after. The day, which was interesting from the very start, I finished my last day of classes and bought an inordinately priced bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon blanc just for the sake of it, to celebrate with Jas at the Kongens Have, where you could catch the most beautiful sunset, just if you wanted, you didn’t even have to try hard, there was often space where you could squeeze even, then nature and the trees and the birds did the trick. The sight was dazzling. The small palace of a princess that never married reminded me and Jas of sad and necessary fact that at the age of 21, we still miserably failed our societal obligations with none of us having a partner and no planned kids, in the words of my great grandmother: “an utmost disgrace to the society, Jonathan, and don’t you even get me started on the degree, out of all possible things you could study you went for fashion?!”. Anyhow, as I said, I had a good feeling about the day right from the start although it was mundane, the classes were specifically disinteresting on the very last day, choose this elective if you are big on history, so I did and the course was sheer bullshit but oh what would you expect from a wanky course with a name Histories of Fashion? But that is not really that relevant because what followed afterwards led to a sharp turn for the better, as Jas directly called me that she made it, I still do not get why would somebody go for a med school, but somehow she did and ended up getting good at it, similarly to cooking a food from scratch with altered ingredients that somehow end up delicious together although you could never tell if you had not tried and that is exactly what the philosopher, Kierkegaard was his name? (he is kinda famous here, I wouldn’t know otherwise) that you can only understand your life perceived backwards but the tragedy and blessing is hidden in the fact that oh silly you simply cannot do so, you have to live it forward, however much would you want to do anything else, of course, you could also commit suicide, but you can end up regretting that too, so you might as well continue and keep on going. But that is not really relevant, as I was saying, we were sitting with Jas in Koningshave, a fine half of Sauvignon residing in our stomachs, the sun having just set behind the cold Danish brickhouses, when the phone rang. Neither of us hid our surprise, who was it, who could it be? And then the great ass Limski on the phone, calling from the-Earth-knows where in a hushed and excited voice, come Jonathan, come but quick, put your best dress on and bring Jas too, quick, before the doors close, I got in on a kick-ass party and you should come too, where are youuuuu bish come and better be there before they close the entry, so hurry okay love you bye and with that the line went dead. 

So that is essentially what we did, I put on a blazer I thrifted ages ago in a godforsaken secondhand store, I suspected the owner to deal cocaine under the cash desk as a side job because there was no way he could survive selling those overpriced pieces of crap he called vintage fashion. I bargained the price down and now I was glad I did, because the blazer gave the outfit look of a gentleman coming from a funeral to a rave, which did sound utterly unbelievable but anyhow, it was giving, Jas was also stellar, she put on those shoes in which she makes men go crazymaaaad for her, combined with a summery top, which was perhaps a mistake because the Danish summer was an oxymoronic term, there was only bad and worse weather, the perpetual flow of rain that made you cry and made Tove Ditlevsen kill herself eventually, either way none of that mattered now, so we grabbed our bags and put on a little bit of makeup, since Limski emphasized, this is a one of a kind venue, and we called a taxi as this was an exceptional event and we were already two weeks late to the club. 

II. 

Limski was dead-ass drunk by the time we arrived, but apparently, the sole fact of him knowing us was sufficient to let us pass by the bodyguards without any further problems. Despite his miserable state, he did not understate the venue. To be brutally honest, I have never seen that many rich people in a single place. Serving caviar with top-notch champagne, this was the place to be. I looked back at Jas, our eyes glimmering with excitement. “Time to find rich husbaaaands”, we exclaimed eagerly and went into the crowd. Another thing which we  should have known by then was that the entire venue was organized by a corporate Sweet Dreams LLC, who used to own the sugar factory before it closed down. But none of that seemed to matter too much then. Pity.  

Me and Jas had always different hookup strategies, where Jas tried to act inaccessible and that worked especially well with young macho boys who would give their last dime only to talk with her. I employed a slightly different, nonetheless successful, game plan. I attempted to talk with as many people as possible but acted superficially interested, as if I cared so much about the monetary policy of Rwanda or concerns about the agricultural status of the U.S. (I really did not). I felt I was really mature enough for my age of 21 and hence I sought the company of predominantly older and well-endowed men. I could not really complain about my wealth status, about getting occasional gifts or limousine rides. Coming from a humble working-class family background, I embraced the world of high-class society with ultimate gratitude. How simple, to be rich and pretty, to wear deceitful masks, at a mendacious parade of vanity, prestige, and old money. 

After making a couple of politeness entries to daddies who help with my monthly rent, I spotted a guy I have never seen at similar occasions before. His tanned skin indicated coming from the land of happiness, an eternal holiday fever dream. Although the beard gave hints of maturity, the earrings carried the energy of a young soul still. I had nothing to lose, so I acted on it. After a drink or two, I positioned myself strategically in the middle of the conversation, played dumb and when the others stopped the passionate discussion about restructuring Southeast Asia, I introduced myself. 

“Beautiful good evening. My name is Jonathan, pleased to meet you.”

Such an entry which usually works with people above thirty did leave him unimpressed, to put it diplomatically. Nevertheless, he stretched out his hand. He took a good look, judging me from head to toe. Something was telling me he is worth the hassle. 

“Matthew, nice to meet you too. How do you like the soirée so far?”

“I am really enjoying myself, cannot complain. How about you?”

“Parties are not really for me, not gonna lie. Care for a drink?”

That was a quick move. I did not back off.

“Oh, don’t mind if I do! It could be sweet, what are you drinking?”

“I started with Cosmopolitan, but now I am switching to vodka shots. Does either of them work?”

His bluntness in being a heavy drinker really surprised me but I persevered. 

“Yeaaah, I am actually big on shots, I know that it might be of no interest to you but growing up in Eastern Europe, vodka shots were a common thing.”

Mention of a foreign seemingly third-world country land in a room full of white priviliege in seemed to spark an interest in him. 

“Please do tell more, I am really curious about your vodka experiences, and everything else, besides that..” he exclaimed with a wink. 

And so we talked about how life was, how I grew up and what went down and led me to leave Slovakia. He, on the other hand, spoke about his experiences in Brazil (he gave off latino vibes, I knew it!!!) and how he does not intend to come back, for cultural and sexuality reasons. I expressed my utmost regrets for that, and I genuinely meant it. Feeling disowned by your own country is worse than most of the feelings I have ever experienced in my life. Bit by bit, you forget and the wounds start to heal. But the fact that damage gets done in the first place is inevitable, cruel and above all, unfair. But that is how life is. Or we arrived to a similar conclusion of something like that. Then the vodka shots have kicked in. I started to show my heart-eyes, which I specifically prepare for my subjects of interest and he did seem to take the clue. In the midst of our  staggering conversation on the importance of politics in the life of an individual, Matthew bluntly asked:

“Yeah, I was just wondering how would it feel to kiss you?”

“Aw, please say less. You can find this out very easily.”

And with that, both of our heads leaned in for a kiss, synchronizing our lips almost perfectly, place in place. He tasted of raspberries and wilderness. Also, having used the right amount of tongue and biting made me want more, which is a rare case, given my clientele. I could feel getting a boner so I knew that was the time to halt the funny business, at least for a bit. I could not afford somebody seeing us in an open area like this. The sun started to slowly set and his face glowed in the glimmering summer sun. He grinned.

“This feels good.”

I started to giggle. I felt like a schoolboy who just broke his first window. The immense indoctrinated guilt, how good it was to let it go, little by little. 

“I know, right? It was meant to be, I think.”

“Shall we go to my place?”

I thought it through, but my last two brain cells at that hour wanted a place to sleep, not necessarily to have sex, which is especially overrated in our great hypersexualized era. I nodded. 

“Yeaaah, that sounds lovely. Would you call the taxi?”

III.

The taxi came with a suspicious driver. He did not exchange a single word with us and I, gulping, exchanged glances with Matthew, but he scarcely seemed bothered, texting somebody who was allegedly a friend. I did not like the surroundings, it seemed that we were leaving the city centre and moving to the industrial zone.

“Sorry, it had probably slipped my mind , but where did you say you live again?”

“Ah, just a bit further down this road, I know it looks super scary but there are a couple of social housings that have beautiful apartments for very reasonable prices. Don’t worry, darling.”

And with that he squeezed my thigh and winked. It calmed me down. 

In almost no time, I was breathing in the cold air of the night. We stood in front of the inconspicuous white building, as pale as white sugar, almost invisible in the grey, cloudy sky. Oddly enough, the architecture seemed somewhat familiar.

“This is a new building based on the rest of the sugar-cane factory,” Matthew answered, as if he saw into the depths of my brain. He looked me straight in the eyes. “But those times are loooong gone,” he laughed, strangely. I attributed that to the residual alcohol and weird inherited nostalgia for things that he had never been able to experience himself. From what I understood, Matthew lived in one of the apartments as he was eligible for social housing. Denmark: the land of immense opportunities, especially if you are not born into old money. It took him quite a while to fish out the keys. I stammered. I was worried

“If…if…if you want I can take the keys and open the doors if you struggle, it’s not a big deal.”

“Naah, not to worry,” and with a victorious raise of hand, I saw an ancient set of keys, glistening in the moonlight. 

The apartment of his was small but cozy. I parked myself on the small double-sofa while he was fetching some more drinks and lighting the candles, for the atmosphere, he said. My phone started to ring, by looking at the screen it was Jas. I turned it down. We had an agreement to always care about the whereabouts of the other during a drunk night out. Not now, Jas, I thought, and turned on Do not disturb. The vibrations did not stop, though. As if she really needed me. I excused myself to the bathroom and picked up. Her voice was breaking, together with the ragged breath, she seemed really in distress. 

“You need to come pick me up, Jonathan… I fucked up badly…”

“Jas, what is wrong? What happened? Did one of the daddies threaten you again?”

“No, I think they put something in the drinks…some kind of drug… that’s why I slept through and now I don’t even know where they drove me too, Jonathan, I am so scared…I think they might want to kill me… they are in the room upstairs and are discussing business now…something with the sugar factory which used to be in the city?” 

After that statement, she started to sob. It clearly did not look good, and I started to panic on Jas’s behalf as well. Overhearing footsteps approaching the bathroom door also did not help.  

“Is everything okay?” Matthew inquired.

“Yeah, absolutely! No need to worry, I will be done in a minute!” I replied, attempting to sound nonchalantly at all costs. Nevertheless, his shadow did not seem to move from the translucent milky glass door. I sighed.  It was not the first time Jas threw a tantrum like this - I attributed her tendency to dramatize everything to her large imagination and habit of exaggerating, even at the most inconvenient times, which was right now. My patience was wearing thin. I interrupted her blabbering aggressively. 

“Jas, for chrissake, at least try to send me your location! Or did they take away your phone too?”

“No, luckily. They probably forgot about it while driving. Just a second, the signal here is super crappy, I think I am in a cellar of some huge building, or a factory even?”

The location beeped. I couldn’t believe my own eyes. Cold, freezing sweat emerged at my forehead as I leaned back to the bathroom tiles, breathing in and out to calm myself down. “Alright, I will come as soon as possible.”

The location seemed to be a couple of floors beneath the apartment I was in right now, in the basement. I staggered and then walked out of the bathroom, wiping the sweat off with a towel I found on the rack. Matthew wore a perplexed look on his face. In his hands, a bottle of wine yet unopened. I broke the uncomfortable silence. 

“Change of plans. Could you show me the basement?”

IV. 

“I don’t think this is a good idea, especially at this time of the night. Jonathan, are you sure?”

I angrily skipped a pair of stairs. 

“Yes, if her phone did not lie, she must be somewhere nearby. And I will not leave my friend at the mercy of somebody while she is drugged by god-knows-which substan- where do these doors lead, actually?”

We stopped in front of large, heavy metal doors that had a huge bloody red 7 on them. Anything could be behind these. I mean, anything in the range of rusty car pieces to a dead body. Jas’s dead body- I gulped. Better not to think about that. What I read in some self-help literature is that you should think positively and good things will simply come your way. Right now, in the middle of the night, in the cellar in the godforsaken part of the town, the good things appeared to take their sweet fucking time. Matthew seemed perplexed. Clearly, the alcohol started to take its toll. I tried to grip the chains that kept the doors locked.

“Do you have the keys from these doors?” “Yes, I do,” and he picked out a stack of keys. Matthew started fumbling with the lock, trying every key, unsuccessfully. After a couple of minutes, my patience was exhausted again.

“For fuck’s sake, give them to me,” and within a scope of few seconds, the doors swung open. 

The sight could have well been cropped from some stupid horror show. 

Inside the doors, a seemingly vast collection of machines lay, some of them inactive, some of them currently in power, with a power source buzzing somewhere in the back. I have never seen any of those, but they seemed to be used for sugar processing, or for immersing something. And there she was, Jas, but also not her, surrounded by some glistening liquid, perhaps glue?

A movement behind me, before I was able to come to help her, a dull thud and a sharp pain in the back of my head. Before I knew it, I lost consciousness. 

I woke up tied to one of the machines, stuck to what looked from where I was like a strangely positioned conveyor belt. Not in a kinky way. I glanced at my surroundings, because the situation looked grim. I saw Matthew, he was looking at me, eyes full of fear. Jas was nowhere to be seen.  I started to scream.  “Help, for chrissake! I am tied to this god-knows-what even..”

“No, he won’t.” A thick, raucous voice I have not heard before. A man, possibly in his mid-sixties let himself be heard. “Because I and Matthew, we have an agreement, do we? He brings me young figurines and that helps me sustain the business. Now, this place used to be a sugar factory, which you probably do not remember, young man, because you do not seem to be from over here. Anyway, as I was saying, most of the factory machines did not survive, but some of them did. And that,” and now the elderly could-pass-for-a-businessman cackled a bit, “enabled us to continue with the business. And Matthew and others alike, they have a simple job. Look for pretty people, like you, or a pretty pretty girl that we had here before, just a couple of hours before, alas, may she rest in peace!”. The man seemed to be very content with himself. The same could not be said about Matthew, he was somewhat perplexed and doubtful, even.

I glared at him in disbelief. “Is this true? So the whole night was just for this? You scumbag! You cheap classy faggot! You used me!”

Matthew stood silently, as if pondering what to say in reply. After a while, he finally came up with something: “Well, I tried to steer you away from the cellar, but you did not listen, and you cannot save everyone, amirite?” But the words sounded artificial, forcefully coming from his mouth, as some kind of scenario I have heard before. The businessman laughed, clearly pleased with such a response.

“Now now, let us not get too ahead of ourselves. You already heard the unfortunate fate of the sugar factory. However, you still do not know what is the purpose of this fancy machinery. And this one,”, and another dramatic pause, “will certainly be a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Let me entertain you with the world of fake sugar.”

V.

“You cannot be serious.” I was on the verge of crying. “This is just too ridiculous. You capture people, and then you immerse them into boiling sugar liquid solution… only to make real-size sugary statues? All the hassle for this? Why the fuck you couldn’t have hired a sculptor to do the job? Why murdering people?”

The man giggled. “Well well well, today we have a philosopher, innit! The truth is, you are right! It would have been much much simpler, but here is the thing,” and now the man has approached me, almost face to face, I could smell his breath, which reeked of tobacco and way too many spritzes. “The thing nobody is willing to tell you, which is that most of the immensely wealthy are also terribly perverse. And therefore, having a sugary statue with a dark hint to it makes you fun at opulent dinner parties. Much more fun than a boring-ass piece of art anybody can have. But enough of the chit-chat. Let us do the dirty work.” And with that, he pulled down the lever. I started approaching the boiling liquid. My eyes were fixated on Matthew. I could not believe he is a cowardly bastard like this. That did not sound like him. But oh, didn’t he do the same thing to me just yesterday? Captured me in the trap full of sugary compliments and questions that made me open more and more. Now, in the new light, all acts of service seemed insincere, all proposals of future holidays preposterous. With every second, I loathed him more and more, not for making me die this way, in the middle of nowhere, but for encapsulating me in the sugary world even before, leading me to binge on all his words like sweet candy. However, in Matthew’s eyes, I saw a different emotion, aside from guilt, was there some urgency? Will he do something, after all?

My head and entire body approached the boiling liquid. A matter of a few minutes and it will all be over. 

But I sensed Matthew moved. Will he, after all, save the day?

VI. 

Turns out, he did not. He only asked for a pay rise after I got fully immersed in Danish sugar. And how do I know all of this? Funny that you ask. Turns out there is no afterlife. No heaven or hell, in the end all beings just float, back and forth, a few meters above the earth. You cannot bump into anyone, but you may talk. It brings up interesting conversations, really. Yesterday I talked with Lagerfeld, about his last collection that he did not manage to finish. And sometimes, out of sheer curiosity, I go to one of the dinner parties that have these inordinately priced cocktails and take a look at my statue. Could have ended up worse, I look beautiful, with eternal sugar that envelops me, glistening in the descending sun. And so I laugh and walk away while I see Matthew immersed in a conversation, wrapping a brand new person in compliments and courtesies. And the scent of sugar, almost imperceptible, lingers in the air for a little longer.

So, looking back, I have to give it to him because he really is a master of his own sweet, syrupy world of fake sugar.