A---, Sweden

A--- waited for me outside the turnstiles of his metro station, but having never met each other, I walked right past him without recognition and sat on a bench outside. It took a few minutes of mutual waiting and eye-contact dancing before he ventured to ask if I was waiting for him. Yes, I suppose I was.

A--- cut a boyish 18-year-old figure, sporting a shaved head, shapely eyebrows, dark eyeliner and bright pink eyeshadow. White dress collar and a hint of black tie spied out from under his thin white tee-shirt, stained with a political message scrawled sloppily across it in black magic marker. He was certainly friendly enough in our short walk to the apartment complex, which had the aura of a place overwhelmingly inhabited by the elderly. Crisp, golden birch leaves covered the path underfoot.

He had moved out of his staid parents' house and into this tiny Stockholm commune just a few months prior, when he'd begun his university studies in aesthetics. A--- seemed to reject everything "mainstream," from his choices in housing, roommates, lovers, clothing and field of study to binary gender definitions to eating animal products to household chores to throwing out trash to paying for public transportation. Why push only one boundary when you can push them all simultaneously? He was just 18, embracing his own definition of freedom -- one in some respects far freer, in others more restrictive, than my own, nearly 10 years his senior.

Opening the front door and the apartment door without a key, A--- welcomed me unceremoniously into their home. I removed my shoes though there was nowhere clean to step. Bathroom and kitchen were the only escape from the one room we would share. Tall, full bookshelves lined the far wall; on the other was painted a gigantic, fantastical mural that extended across the room and wrapped onto the wall adjacent to the kitchen. The opposite wall was a large bank of windows unbroken by curtains, underneath which sat the computer station, an old leather recliner, and piles of non-functioning electrical equipment. The majority of the space was taken up by "the bed," a cobbled-together collection of mattresses on the floor where we would all sleep. I placed my suitcase between the electrical junk and the chair, next to the end of the bed where I decided I would be sleeping.

Perpendicular to my hosts.

A--- made clear over our lunchtime conversation just the type of people they refused to host anymore: couples (they made awkward bedfellows) and Germans. The latter were so pedantic, he said, refusing to share the bed and instead seeking refuge (I'm not exactly sure where, between the stacks of magazines, piled empty tetrapaks and food remnants) on the kitchen floor. Those that acquiesced to the bed insisted on using their own bedding or sleeping bags, clearly another no-no. So my clean sheets stayed in the suitcase, and I was thankful that I had packed cold-weather pajamas -- a full-body mental and physical armor (for the German in me) from the crumbs, dirt and flecks which had gathered under the comforters in the cracks between the mattresses.

It was only for two nights, I reasoned with myself. How often does one have to opportunity to pick the brains of Swedish love anarchists? That night before bed, A---, his current lover and I debated theories of economic power, individualism and the optimal role of the family and the market.

I made my part of the bed, dressed and breakfasted quietly before leaving my sleeping hosts early Sunday morning. The single room was baking in the morning sunshine and the smell of their farts -- testament to the previous night's cabbage and carrot stew. Under a clear sky, the air outside was frosty, filled briefly with the sound of a departing moped having difficulty starting on the sidewalk, fading into the rolling wheels of the small suitcase dragging briskly behind me to the metro stop. The path's adjacent, glacial boulders and carpet of fallen leaves had already transported me home.