Jón Gnarr - The Pirate

“How are you feeling?”

“All right. Is this a hospital?”

“Go back to bed.”

“Where am I?”

“You were brought here last night. You are in Department A2, which is in the psychiatric ward in City Hospital.”

The woman followed me back into the room. The psychiatric ward of City Hospital? Was that true? Was I going to be sent to Klepp? When the woman was gone, I snuck back down and found the person on duty.

“Can I make a phone call?”

They gave me a phone. I called Alli, who I knew had some Tintin books.

“Hi, this is Jón.”

“Hi.”

“Would you bring me your Tintin books?”

“Tintin books? Why?”

“I’m in a mental ward.”

“You’re in a mental ward?”

“Yes. Would you bring your Tintin books to me in the psychiatric ward at City Hospital?”

I said goodbye to Alli and went back into my room. He came later that day with the Tintin books.

“What happened to you?”

“I don’t know? I took travel sickness tablets.”

“But why are you here?”

“I don’t know. I just really want to read Tintin.”

“Okay.”

I chose The Black Island and began to read it. Alli sat with me for a few moments, then stood up and said goodbye.

“Bye.”

“Bye,” I said and did not look up from the book.

Later that day my mom came. It surprised me that she wasn’t angry. She was just happy and said:

“I’m simply glad you’re okay. You must never do that again, my darling boy.”

“No.”

We didn’t have to discuss it further. I’d never do that again.

“I’m just going to read Tintin.”

Mom stroked my hair and sat silently while I read Tintin. Several days went by, and I regained my equilibrium. I occasionally went out and sat in the lounge and chatted with other patients. A few days later, Mom and Dad came to get me. I learned later what had happened. I had run out of the babysitting party all of a sudden. I had probably gotten very weird, but they did not know what was affecting me. Mom was then woken up in the night and summoned outside by a kid who knew me and had found me lying under some car. It was freezing cold out, and he realized that I wasn’t okay and decided to take me home. Neither Mom nor Dad discussed it ever again. We never ever discussed it.

When I was working selling lottery tickets for the Red Cross, I got to know a few shopkeepers from the time I had a sales table at Glæsibæ. Since I was very polite and did pretty well and was a pretty likeable youth, I decided that spring to talk to Guðmundur, the store manager in the shop at Glæsibæ. I had chatted with him a few times when I was selling tickets. I had gotten his advice about where to set up my table, and as a result we’d ended up chatting. I decided to talk to Guðmundur and see if I couldn’t get some work from him in order to get some money. Guðmundur was receptive and asked if I had any knowledge of salted meat and that sort of food. I couldn’t believe it! I replied without hesitation that I was brought up on Icelandic food and my dad was from Breiðafirði, that he had a sour-barrel out on the balcony full of liver and blood pudding, salted meat and seal flippers and rams’ testicles and all kinds of stuff. I knew it all by name. And so I ended up with a job at the meat counter in Glæsibæ. The work consisted mainly of cutting and carving meat, carrying carcasses, and being generally of use to people as a meat-fetching-person, but also jumping in and assisting with serving when needed. This I did with great success. I served sausage meat, slices of leg of lamb, and other such things with courtesy and professionalism. Customers reckoned that I was some kind of meat specialist and were constantly asking me about this and that to do with meat. What did I recommend, would this be better than the other, and questions like that. I had no idea about any of it and just said whatever.

“Which do you recommend, lamb or pork chops?”

“Lamb,” I replied, boastfully.

I of course had no idea, but people listened to my advice and seemed contented. It was no problem. It was not like I was being tested on something. People never asked whether I recommended lamb or pork chops then bought both, went home, compared them, and came back the next day and complained. So it was all very easy. When people asked what was the best sausage meat, I just pointed at something and said:

“This is tasty and delicious.”

I spoke to people. I really liked this job. There was a big barrel of salted meat, and there were many women every day who came to buy salted meat. I handled it with the same professionalism as everything else.

“Can I get a cut from the spine?”

“Sure,” I replied cheerfully.

I stuck the fork down so it was submerged in the barrel, stabbed something and raised it up in the air.

“That’s not a cut from the spine.”

“No, hahaha, I just got a bit confused.”

Then I just stuck the fork on the next piece and raised it up the same way, and so it went until they saw the bit they liked. Guðmundur was extremely pleased with me. I worked hard, and I thought it was all very exciting. I even began to wonder if this wasn’t something I could see myself working at in future; I thought the men who carried the meat around were pretty cool. They were tough guys with aprons that were always bloody. Maybe I could have some future with meat. I could definitely learn it. I admired the way the meat industry men took whole carcasses and sawed them into separate pieces, like chops and cuts of lamb leg and thighs and spine. But despite the fact that I dreamed of being a meat industry worker, I was mainly a punk and an anarchist. There lay my real vocation and ambition.

I had long been considering getting a mohawk. I had repeatedly seen this hairstyle in Melody Maker and Bravo . There were real punks with mohawks. The singer in The Exploited had one. There was one punk in Reykjavík with a mohawk, and that was Bjarni from Masturbation, who was also my friend. He had gotten the nickname Bjarni the Mohawk because he made a big deal about his hair. He had a wide stripe, but I wanted to have a narrow one like the singer in The Exploited. Getting a mohawk was a statement, and as a result one became more punk. It said something about a person: that the person was brave, that he didn’t listen to his parents, that he was independent and had his own ways. A very specific statement. I knew that if I discussed it with my mother, she would never allow it. I decided to get myself a mohawk without asking anyone, neither king nor priest, nor even Mom. I discussed the matter with Fat Dóri. He immediately offered to cut my hair. His father owned electric hair clippers along with several combs and some shaving things. Dóri trusted himself entirely to cut my hair and found it exciting, so I just decided to strike while the iron was hot and get him to shave off my all my hair with the exception of a stripe down the middle of my head. He shaved me with the clippers and crowned his work by smearing shaving cream on my head and shaving the rest off with a cutthroat razor. I was extremely pleased with the results. This was very much a next step towards independence, as I saw it; it would arouse the admiration and envy of other punks. Together with a plastic leather jacket that I had bought at the Kattavinafélag flea market and the punk signs and dog collar, I was finally starting to resemble the punks in Bravo . I’d also amassed quite a collection of ripped jeans that were all thoroughly marked-up with a series of band names and slogans. Moreover, I also had some well-worn military boots with which I was extremely pleased. The army boots were an integral element of punk style — you wore your pants over the boots, of course, because if you tucked the pants down into boots, that was like Nazi style. I also had a green military coat my mother had bought at the secondhand clothing store, and I had naturally scrawled anarchist signs and slogans all over it. My mohawk totally crowned my punk creation. I was finally complete. I selected the date of my shearing for when Mom was in London with her friends and I was home alone with Dad.