I started going to the youth center at Bústaðir to try to find other punks. I ran into Alli there. He lived one street over. His father was a teacher at Austurbæjar School, and Alli went to school there, so we didn’t really see each other except during the summer. Alli had become a punk. He was wearing an old suit jacket with patches on it. I checked them carefully. They were all punk except one: The Police. The Police weren’t a punk band, but New Wave. Their lyrics were asinine and not about anything important. One song was called “Walking on the Moon” and was about some idiotic people who were walking about on the moon. There were endless songs about girls like Roxanne. Real punks didn’t whine about girls. Still, Alli was enough of a punk to kick around with.
Most kids at Bústaðir were either disco freaks or normals. Most were fine and left me alone. But there was a certain group of boys I called the Morons. The Morons were boys who thought they were really funny and witty and were always playing pranks and fronting around each other. But they were annoying, hanging out in groups and talking loudly. The Morons were always cheerful but also really annoying. In winter they would wrestle in the snow and try to cram snow inside each other’s mouths and stuff. Their favorite music was comedy ska, like Madness and Bad Manners. They went to films like H.O.T.S. about cheerleaders in high school and thought they were brilliant. They didn’t have girlfriends; they just hung around with each other. Their lives seemed to pass in scuffles, screeches, and bad jokes.
When the Morons were preparing a prank, their behavior changed. They’d start whispering and giggling and tense up with the exertion of stifling their laughter. Their pranks always ended up being somehow related to girls. Sometimes they played with a tampon or pad, dipping it in ketchup and throwing it at each other and screaming with hilarity. Condoms, however, were a total fascination to them. Sometimes they showed up with a condom they had spat in and threw it amongst themselves, or pretended to discover it on each other. When they were done throwing it around themselves, they threw it at me. The Morons had a particular interest in me.
Every single night, the Morons taunted me. They jeered at me, pushed me, and tried to trip me when they ran into me. I asked them to leave me alone but that just got them more keyed up, so I learned to keep quiet until they were done. Usually, some girl came to my rescue, or an employee. I endured it without ever complaining to the staff. I knew that if I did, I would simply get beaten up later. Before I left, I made sure that they weren’t outside. Inside, I tried to sit where employees could see me, and I never went to the bathroom alone. When I needed to go, I seized my chance as soon as some employee did, or snuck away when my enemies weren’t around or weren’t looking.
I was never invited to join in with any of the stuff that was going on. I didn’t want to, either; I simply wasn’t interested. Generally, I thought teenagers were boring and stupid. Most of them were caught up in pointless and superficial stuff. The girls seemed most concerned about their looks. The boys thought about nothing but the girls. If they had hobbies, it was sports. I despised sports.
I hung out in the corner, watching and waiting for a punk to walk in the door. The one I most hoped to meet was Siggi the Punk. He was the most famous punk in Reykjavík. He was in the band Masturbation and was from the neighborhood. He was a real punk, with earrings and a leather jacket and marked-up jeans. I’d never met him. I’d only seen pictures of him in the papers. I’d heard stories about him and seen graffiti by him on bus stops. He drew anarchist signs in black ink and wrote short slogans like “Fuck The System” and “Down with the police!” I really wanted to meet Siggi the Punk, get information and advice from him, and even become his friend. But he was a few years older than me, so it was pretty unlikely that he had any interest in befriending me.
I wanted to meet someone with whom I could talk, someone who understood me. Someone in the same boat. I wanted to talk about the system and how it was trying to kill my spirit. I wanted to meet someone with an understanding of anarchy who could tell me more about that phenomenon. I wanted to explore the mysteries of life. I wouldn’t be at ease until I could get some answers. Maybe there was some anarchist country somewhere where people could go and be left alone. I craved knowledge the way a thirsty man longs for water. But not those pointless facts taught in school. I had no interest in them. I wanted my knowledge. There were no answers in the newspapers, either. They all seemed busy with anything but what mattered. I wanted to find books that might possibly contain some answers for me. But what books were there? There weren’t any in the library. They were old and outdated, dry and boring. Þórbergur Þórðarson was dead. If he’d been alive, I would have tracked him down. I’d read most of his books. I felt in harmony with him. He had understood me and guided me. Why was I always so nervous, anxious, and uneasy in my soul while everyone else seemed relaxed and worry-free? Was I abnormal? Was I insane? Or was it perhaps that they were abnormal?
So I sat there evening after evening and put myself through endless suffering in order to find answers to the mystery of life. My anarchist tags and buttons became the source of endless comments.
“Are you an anarchist?”
“Yes.”
“You don’t know what anarchism is!”
“Sure.”
“What is it?”
“It means being left alone and doing what you want without the police or the authorities messing with you. It’s about being against all the rules.”
“Against all the rules? Are you against traffic regulations, too?”
“Errr, yes.”
“So, can someone in a car just drive into you if you’re on the sidewalk?”
“Errr, no…”
“You don’t know what anarchism is at all.”
“Yes, it’s being left alone by idiots like you.”
I usually ended up helpless. My basic knowledge of anarchism didn’t allow for debate. I went back to the library and pored over the books on anarchism. I stored the key names and theories in my memory and decided that I probably wasn’t a Bakuninist but rather a Proudhonist. Next time I was asked if I was an anarchist, I was on top of things:
“Yes, I’m a Proudhonist.”
This was a completely new tactic.
“What’s that?”
“It’s a theory within anarchism that’s named after Pierre Joseph Proudhon.”
Proudhon got me neatly out of any discussion of anarchy. People got the impression that I’d done my homework. If that failed, then I dropped in Bakunin’s name, referring to the conflict between their theories. After that, they stopped looking at me like some kind of half-wit, and more as a mentally disturbed genius. But although that tactic stopped debate, it didn’t stop the Morons. They didn’t care how much I knew about Proudhon or Bakunin or anarchism. They just thought it was fun to pick on me.
I tried to avoid Alli if I could. If we were both together, the tormenting was so much worse. We were on sale, two for one, ripe to be bullied. It didn’t improve things that I was the son of a cop and Alli was a teacher’s son. The Morons for some reason found it more fun tormenting Alli than me. Sometimes they got at him and left me more or less in peace. He also took the teasing more personally than I did and got angry. That was, of course, grist to the Morons’ mill, and they got all the more provoked and excited. I didn’t get stirred up. I didn’t care, even when Coke was poured over me and used chewing gum thrown at me. I had a goal. I was on a secret spy mission. My assignment was to gather data about punk. And if this was part of my martyrdom, so be it. When I’d got to know more punks, we’d get together a big clique, and no one would dare do anything to us. One day, punks would control everything.