Jón Gnarr - The Pirate

“I just don’t know what to do with you! You’re absolutely intolerable! Fooling about downtown, dead drunk, and brought home by the police!”

By the police? The police had brought me home? Why? Because they knew me, or because I had done something? I had no memory of it.

“How could you do this to your father!”

I kept quiet. There it was. Was she angry because it was embarrassing for Dad? Perhaps, then, I hadn’t done anything wrong? Maybe everything just revolved around my dad. I had to call Alli. I looked at her searchingly.

“What?”

“Why do you act like this!?!?”

Why do I act like this? What was I thinking? I’d just wanted to try being drunk. I simply thought it would be fun. I hadn’t thought about the consequences — I’d thought it would all be fine. I’d not thought about how I was going to hide it from Mom. Things just happened of their own accord.

“I don’t know,” I mumbled.

Mom sighed.

“I don’t know what the devil to do with you, child!”

Then she slammed the food down on the table and ran into the bedroom. I sat there alone, staring at meatballs. I thought about calling Alli but didn’t dare. Mom couldn’t hear that.

When Dad came home from work later that evening, he went straight to the television room without talking to me. I wondered if I should just flee to my room or go and talk to him. I didn’t know how he would react. Probably he’d just nag. But it was best to clear things up, so I followed him.

“I’m sorry, Dad.”

He wasn’t pretending to be angry or hurt, as he so often had done before. He actually was . He was obviously spooked. He felt terrible, actually terrible. It wasn’t just that he was ashamed about facing his police colleagues. A strange feeling filled me. This was real. Although it was bad, it was at the same time somehow also good. I felt bad. I was ashamed, and he was scared. But all the same I felt some strange joy at having a real interaction with my dad. We weren’t playing some game. He wasn’t holding my hand or looking at me with cow eyes. This wasn’t about some paintbrush I had ruined or a meaningless ashtray I had broken or some stupid nonsense about promises. There wasn’t going to be an uncomfortable hug. No whispering, no murmured assurance never to do it again. This mattered. This was serious. This was real. And that reality was almost more valuable than all the pain that came with it.

He was silent. Speechless. No nagging. I didn’t find him repulsive, like so often before. I waited a while, but when he said nothing, I decided to go to my room. I sat on the bed and thought about it. It was like a new light had been turned on inside me, a light that felt warm and cozy. Dad didn’t care about me. But this time it really mattered what I’d done. So I felt fond of him. Perhaps that was the purpose. Maybe the bender was a blessing in disguise. Like a funeral. Could we come together over some kind of self-destructive memory? What would my dad do if I died? How would it feel? He would definitely stop pretending. He would definitely cry. There would be real tears. He would cry over me and not just use me as a shoulder to cry on about something else.

Like at a funeral.

It wasn’t until Monday that I could call Alli.

“Hahaha!” he laughed.

“What?”

“Doing all right?” he asked.

“Yes, what?”

“Man, you were insane!”

That sounded exciting. What had I done? I was scared and excited.

“I don’t remember,” I stammered, albeit with a bit of pride.

“Seriously? You don’t remember going into the police station?”

Into the police station? What was I doing there? I avoided cops at all costs. They were all more or less friends with Dad, who might even be there. He was a cop, and he was always at work.

“Last thing I remember is being in the Parliament garden,” I said.

“That’s it? You don’t remember a thing after that?”

“No,” I said.

I’d never had a “blackout” before, but I knew what one was. “Blackout” was a milestone — almost like having sex for the first time. When you’d had a blackout you were so much more grown-up than before.

“You were fiendishly drunk, man!”

“Yeah…”

A lot of fun stuff had happened during the time I couldn’t remember. I was loaded. It had been weird to move my head, I was up in the clouds and cracking up, and my sense of balance had all gone to shit. I kept tripping and falling over curbs. Alli had supported me.

“But you’re an even bigger idiot than that!”

That bowled me over. What? What had actually happened?

“Just tell me what happened. What happened?”

“You don’t remember?” he asked, as though he doubted it was possible.

“No!” I hissed.

“You were so drunk that I was planning to try and get you on a bus and take you home, but you kept giving me the slip and running away…”

“I did?”

I didn’t remember doing any of it.

“But you couldn’t run away because you’d just fall on your head. I was trying to talk to you but I couldn’t understand a word you were saying.”

“Then what?” I asked, excited.

“Then you rushed into the police station. I tried to pull you away but I couldn’t stop you…”

“I did?” I asked skeptically.

“They thought you were stoned.”

“Okay, and so they drove me home?”

Alli was silent.

“You really don’t remember anything?”

“No!”

“You took out your cock and pissed all over the floor of the police station!”

Alli burst out laughing.

“That’s when I cleared out!”

The world went black. This was awful. Why on earth would I have done that? It was so unlike me. I usually found it almost impossible to pee around others. I couldn’t even take a piss in public. But I’d peed not just in the city center, but on the floor of the police station, right by the front desk, in front of all the cops. Had any other kids been there? Any girls?

After seven years in elementary school, I graduated. I hadn’t learned a thing. I couldn’t remember being taught anything in particular. Most of my classmates had the sort of knowledge that had somehow totally escaped me. I had no idea who Jón Sigurdsson was. I didn’t know he was a hero of the independence movement. I didn’t want to know. For me, he was just some statue downtown. Judging from the pictures, he didn’t seem like an especially fun guy — he had silly hair and sideburns. He was like the annoying politicians on TV that my Dad liked to watch and argue with. Mathematics was likewise a closed book to me. I knew plus and minus but little else. I couldn’t multiply or divide. I refused to learn the multiplication tables. I wasn’t going to use them, ever. I’ll confess I once learned, just about, the five times table. But after that I flatly refused to have anything to do with multiplication. I fought with the teachers and Mom and completely refused to learn multiplication. Division was incomprehensible. I couldn’t follow it. I started thinking about it and instantly it was like it’d taken on some form then gotten stuck somewhere in the dark corners of my mind, lost forever. I didn’t understand a single example.