Jón Gnarr - The Pirate

“Isn’t that enough?” I muttered toward Alli.

Wasn’t it blindingly obvious that I was about to have a heart attack?

“No!” said Alli, determined.

“‘Bad World,’ man!” said Hannes, encouraging.

I wandered up and down the stage, which was more or less made out of pallets. Hannes launched into the song, beat together the drumsticks, shouted one, two, three, four! I had these thundering headaches that got worse with every second; added to this were the convulsions of nervousness. I rambled about without any purpose and stubbed my toes on something. That was the solution! I took a snap decision and decided to fall. It didn’t matter if I just fell or severely injured myself. Anything was better than this hell. When the idea popped up in my mind, I was filled with joy. It was all finally going to end. I tripped forward and collapsed with a ton of noise right off the stage, landing on some bits of wood then rolling from them down onto the pavement.

“Jesus Christ!” shouted someone.

“Are you all right?”

I had fortunately not hurt myself at all, but I played it up in dramatic style. The staff of Outreach helped me up, and I appeared totally maimed.

“I just crashed into…”

“Do you think you’re hurt?”

“Yes, I’m sure I’ve hurt something,” I replied and acted like my ankles and hands were painful, sighing and weeping from the sham pain. They helped me to my feet and led me inside. I was off the hook, lawfully so. The boys in the band didn’t let their heads drop and performed the song without lyrics. With the help of the staff, I was comfortably positioned on the couch inside. A heavy weight had been lifted from me. I decided to bring Nefrennsli to an end because I no longer wanted to be a singer in a band. It was clear that I had no future in music. Music was definitely not for me, and from now on, I would try not to listen to it or play it. But despite the fact that I was finished with the band, it continued to exist thanks to the felt-tip pens. Since only a small audience was at the concert, there weren’t many stories about my performance. The little article about the concert that appeared in the paper didn’t give the impression that Nefrennsli had performed their music any differently than the rest of the bands.

A long time later, people still thought Nefrennsli had been a rather powerful band. The felt-tip pens sketched the road to fame and fortune. All the bus shelters in the city were graffitied, NEFRENNSLI, NEFRENNSLI WAS HERE, NEFRENNSLI RULES, NEFRENNSLI next to anarchist signs. People continued to think that the group must have been a real band to be splashed all around town. Alli and Hannes kept practicing in the garage, but I’d lost all ambition and interest. In the days after, I went thoroughly through the music in my life and decided to only listen to Crass. According to my understanding of what a punk band was, they were the only thing I could accept as genuine punk, so I kept their records but either gave away or threw out all the other albums I had. The Clash, the Sex Pistols, and all those bands that I’d previously esteemed so highly were now nothing but traitors in my mind, sellouts who had betrayed their ideals. Crass were the true punks. From that moment, I also made a distinction between myself and other punks by defining myself as a Crass-punk. If I was asked if I was a punk, I’d affirm that I was, but add by way of further explanation that I was a Crass-punk or even an anarcho-punk, a punk who focuses primarily on anarchism, an evolved version of a punk. I didn’t feel like listening to any more bands that performed songs about some kids who messed about in town and acted like fools or about girls or about things overseas that don’t matter. And I didn’t feel like listening to songs that dealt with something that was happening in the US, such as who was going to be governor of California — that wasn’t really important to me. Anarchism was an integral part of punk rock. That was what punk had to stand on. Punk was supposed to be a tool for the spreading of anarchism, and the punks who didn’t circulate anarchist ideology were therefore not punks, were in reality working against punk. Punk was a way to draw young people to think about anarchism and its importance. My idea of anarchism was something to the effect that I could do what I wanted as long as I did not hurt others and that others could do whatever they wanted so long as they didn’t hurt me. These were the messages that punk bands had a duty to spread through their music.

At this point, it would be appropriate to write something about fall. I could describe in long words the way the light changed, the days shortened, and the nights extended. I could describe the leaves collecting in piles. I could describe the silence in the morning when it gets so cold that birds stop singing. I could describe, too, the rain. But I’m not going to. I don’t look forward to fall.

In the fall, I started a new school for the first time. Réttarholt School had tracking. I was in D-Class. Still, that wasn’t the dunce class. That was the F-Class. A and B were the hotshots. I was pleased to end up in D. Those who ended up in F-Class had no chance and were labeled idiots. The school system gave up on them and mainly tried to keep them away from other students. I don’t know why I didn’t get put in F. My scores weren’t exactly impressive. Maybe it was just difficult to analyze them using the system Réttarholt School relied on. Fossvogs School didn’t give ratings but instead gave reviews. Perhaps I got points for attendance since I’d always been there at Fossvogs School. I just never learned anything.

Rétto had a bad rap. Most people I knew were nervous about starting there. It was a rough school. There were many stories of teachers who seemed bad tempered, and there were several older students who were famously violent. In my class were some kids who had been with me at Fossvogs. The rest I didn’t know. Rétto was a kind of gathering school where the kids from both Fossvogs and Breiðagerði School and several other middle schools ended up. Everyone had changed and grown considerably during the summer. I’d not paid much attention before. The girls had changed the most, and all of a sudden they looked a number of years older than the boys. They were also beginning to wear makeup, which they’d left alone until now. I felt like I’d aged ten years in a single summer, so much had happened. I’d often heard kids talk about Rétto as being for “big kids.” Now I was one of them. I wasn’t a child anymore. I was growing up. I had become what I’d feared and despised most: a teenager. I’d become one of them. I was even starting to get acne. I was fourteen. I was turning into an adult. I’d started smoking and drinking and had gone on my first bender.

I was the only punk at Rétto. Most kids were just ordinary, and some were pranksters. They gawked at me. Some were even afraid of me. I was immediately picked on by some of the older kids, who stopped me in the corridor and made fun of me and asked if they could spit on me and why I was the way I was. I tried to answer them as clearly as I could and conduct myself well. But they weren’t looking for debate or an explanation any more than on previous occasions. They simply didn’t like me and saw to it that the little interest I had in attending school was wiped out. Most of these boys were the same ones I’d had trouble with at Bústaðir, but a few new ones had joined the group.

“Why are you so ugly?”

“I don’t know.”