Jón Gnarr - The Pirate

“Hell…Devil,” I cried happily.

Eiki the Druggie thought it was funny, so he lustily joined in. The girls either giggled or shushed, and our goal was achieved. I thought it was tremendous fun. But Ólaf the priest didn’t agree, and he took Eiki and me aside after the first Confirmation preparation session and told us that if we were quiet and good during the lessons, he would invite us to a hot dog party after Confirmation was done. The party would have hot dogs, Coke, and Prince Polo candy bars in large numbers, and we could enjoy ourselves. We were both so simple and naïve that we swallowed this hook, line, and sinker. Eiki had the excuse that he was a bit simple, but I believed the priest and thought it was a good deal. I was really careful in class and stopped myself from getting up to any nonsense, from jabbering and teasing. I was even, shocking to say, silent and calm. I learned everything I was supposed to learn and made color pictures of some of the icons in church. Later, I got assigned a Biblical passage to memorize. I did it really conscientiously. Anything for the hot dog party and as much Coke and Prince Polo as I could manage. Soon it wasn’t long until the ceremony. We kids discussed how much money we might get as Confirmation gifts. I asked older kids who’d already received Confirmation how much money they’d been given and tried to draw some conclusions. It would definitely be a damn big amount.

As Confirmation day approached, Mom started talking about Confirmation clothes. She opened some brochures she’d brought home from Hagkaup. The brochures were filled with lame guys in repulsively ugly kid-size suits and ties. I flat out refused to wear those sorts of clothes. Mom, however, was no more prepared to debate this than anything else about Confirmation and said simply:

“Jón, you will wear these clothes!”

“But I’ll never wear them again.”

“You’ll be dressed like this at Confirmation and for your Confirmation party.”

“No.”

“You do what I tell you, Jón!”

“Why can’t I just wear normal clothes?”

“Because you’ll do as I tell you.”

“But it’s lame.”

“You’re going to get confirmed and when you get confirmed you wear Confirmation clothes. Anything else isn’t an option.”

Mom took me with her wandering from store to store to try on Confirmation clothes. I was morose and unhappy and didn’t care what clothes she bought. Eventually, she bought a brown wool suit that was in vogue at the time. With the suit she bought a tan shirt and brown wool tie.

“You look so smart.”

“It’s snot-and-vomit!”

Mom ignored me.

“Can’t I wear a clown outfit instead?”

Mom didn’t answer that. Then she bought some brown dress shoes on top of everything else. It was decided.

Confirmation day dawned. The ceremony was in church, and I turned up there in my suit, and then I also had to have some tunic put over me. It was designed to unpunk me. Mom couldn’t imagine standing up with me, as was usual with parents of children getting confirmed, because she was ashamed of how old she was. So it was down to my brother and sister to pretend they were my parents and stand up when my name was mentioned. The ceremony went pretty well. I’d managed to learn everything I had to and muttered something about how I intended to always believe in God and then rattled off the Bible passage I had memorized. Then it was done.

The Confirmation party started. It was a typical party and took place at home. A table had been covered with decorated cookies. There were schnapps and cigarettes for people, neatly spread in bowls throughout the house. Soda and coffee were also set out. I tried keeping as much as possible inside my room alone. Mom had ordered me to wear my confirmation clothes at the party, but I soon took them off. I started with my jacket.

“Why have you taken off your jacket, Jón?”

“Oh, I was just so very hot.”

Then I took off my waistcoat and then my tie, using the same excuse. Towards the middle of the party after Mom had had a glass or two and was starting to slacken off, I switched my shirt for a Sid Vicious T-shirt. The adults were drinking home-brewed wine. Then they all started playing bridge. That’s how all Mom and Dad’s parties ended. Drinking wine and playing bridge.

I was particularly excited about the money I would get as gifts and eagerly received each envelope I was handed; I counted the money and placed it very carefully in a drawer. I also got some interesting things. From Mom and Dad, I got a bass. It was pre-arranged. An excellent, red secondhand HOFFNER. The letters H and O had broken off the bass so it just said FFNER. Since I had a limited sense of musical instruments, I believed the bass was called FFNER, as bizarre as it sounds now. And then I somehow confused this with the legendary instrument label Fender and thought somehow they were the same, Ffner and Fender — not so different. I was extremely pleased with the bass and was totally obsessed with it the whole Confirmation party. In addition, I got Icelandic — English and English — Icelandic dictionaries. In my eyes, these were great treasures because they meant I had been brought the cipher for the code of English, and now I would be better able to solve the mysteries of punk songs. I would be able to pore over lyrics for hours at a time, and when words came along that I did not know, then I could look them up in the treasure chest of the dictionary to find out their meanings. It was a wonderful breakthrough. From my brother I got the Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu. It felt like a silly, inconsequential gift. Although I didn’t know my brother very well, and although he was some twenty-five years older than me, I still felt he should have given me a more significant gift than some silly hippie book. I smiled at him and thanked him for the book and made like I was awfully pleased. All the while, I was planning to take it straight down to the bookstore, return it, and get money instead. But I never did return it because when I started to look at it and read it, I found that it was really pretty interesting. Halldór Laxness wrote the foreword to the book. In it, he said it was the most important book in the world. I decided to keep it and read it. Tao Te Ching : the book of the path. A path it isn’t possible to pave. The reality is that this one book has had more impact on my life than anything; I have it to this day. I’ve read it more than any other book and have tried to adopt the things it suggests.

I wanted to take the Confirmation money and buy something, but my mother wouldn’t discuss it.

“No, Jón. This money all goes into a bank account.”

A bank account? Fuck! Why did she always need to create these inconveniences? Why couldn’t I do what I wanted? Wasn’t this my money? Why had I gone through this crappy Confirmation party if I couldn’t even have my own money? In the end, I got part of the money and was allowed go shopping at Grammið and buy some punk albums. Mom also drove me to the store where she’d bought the bass. The store was called The Sport Market, and sold music players, skis, and other stuff. There I proudly bought, with my own money, an excellent Sharp tape player. That meant I’d have a means of listening to music inside my own room. It would allow me to buy LPs, play them on the sound system in the living room with Mom, record them onto cassettes, and play them in peace inside my room, where I’d also have the lyrics and all the basic information about the songs, like their names and so on. I took this tape player with me everywhere I went. It had a handle so it was easy to carry around, and it took batteries. I often lay inside my room for hours listening to the tape player. I also enjoyed taking it with me into the bathroom, lying in the bath for hours listening to cassettes, and more often than not, I sang along enthusiastically.