“Hey,” I said because I recognized him.
I was terrified. He was out of his head on drugs and clearly didn’t recognize me. He blinked his one healthy eye constantly, as if trying to focus, and looked at me.
“Are you a boy or a girl?” he asked in a rasping voice.
I thought about it.
“A girl,” I said.
He gave me a sharp look and shook his clenched fists in my face.
“You’re lucky there; I don’t thump girls.”
I nodded. He looked at me questioningly then gruffly said:
“You’re the ugliest woman I’ve ever seen in my life!”
On Fridays and Saturdays the police sometimes stormed Hlemmur on a cleanup mission. They’d show up in several cars, surround the place, and drag off all those who were drunk or at all suspicious. The police, however, knew us and left us in peace. The winos were often angry and fought with the police. But it was to no avail. The cops were always stronger and got the winos face down and handcuffed them. The winos never had a chance against the cops.
The police knew that we generally never did anything. We never hurt anyone, never fought, and never broke in anywhere. Yet sometimes one of us would get hit or taunted or picked on. Then we’d stand together as one. Once, a kid in our group ran into Hlemmur as we were sitting together in a big crowd. He said that two boys had been messing with him on the Kópavogur bus. They had spit on him and hassled him because he was a punk. Among us there were some older boys who were elated at this news and wanted to know where the aggressors had gone. The kid had last seen them walking from Hlemmur in the direction of Rauðarárstígur. The whole group ran after them, ten, fifteen kids. When they saw us they took off. We chased them at a sprint and got one. We dragged him into an alley, but when he was there, we didn’t know what we should do. One of the older boys grabbed him and slammed him against the wall.
“Were you teasing my friend?”
“No,” he said, struck with terror.
“Yes,” said the kid who had been messed with. He was twelve years old.
Then they fell silent. Nobody said a word. The boy thought maybe we were going to kill him and began to cry.
“Oh, just let him go,” someone said.
We felt sorry for him. The older boy let go of him, and he ran away. That’s the way we stood together and looked after one another. It felt great to not always be alone, to be part of a group and have friends who kept an eye on you and stood alongside you.
Sometimes, I’d hang out alone in town at night. Those times, I’d generally lie to my mother that I was going to stay with some friend, or else she was away somewhere. I enjoyed staying awake at night. I always had trouble sleeping and could sometimes be awake for two nights in a row. I’d wander around and luxuriate in the tranquillity and wait for Hlemmur to open in the morning.
One night I was sitting on a bench outside Hlemmur. It was pretty warm weather. It must have been about four o’clock in the morning. There were few people up and about, but I took the chance when someone came by to bum cigarettes. Then a man I recognized came up to me. I’d seen him before. He tore tickets at a movie theater near Hlemmur. He was middle-aged, big-waisted, gray-haired. He was always in jeans with a wide, large-buckled belt and colorful shirts that were open all the way down to his belly so that his chest was clearly visible. I didn’t know him, but I had often seen him. I scrounged a cigarette off him and we talked. He asked about my circumstances, what my hobbies were, and what I was doing there in the middle of the night. I really enjoyed the company and attention.
“What sort of music do you listen to?”
“I listen to punk,” I said resolutely. “I’m a punk!”
“That so? I’ve got a lot of punk albums.”
This felt strange. He didn’t strike me as a man who enjoyed punk, but I had, to be fair, met a bunch of kids who were not punks and still listened to punk rock, like Alli.
“Really?” I asked, excited.
“Yes, yes.”
“What bands do you listen to?”
“What bands do you enjoy?” he asked in return.
“I mainly listen to Crass.”
He nodded as if he knew Crass. Then I reeled off a few other bands that I knew well and assured him that I definitely didn’t like New Wave.
“Aren’t you cold?”
“Yes, a little.”
I was really cold; in fact, I was just wearing a T-shirt and leather jacket.
“Want to come back to mine and warm up?”
“Wow, that’s not an offer you get every day.”
I found it a bit odd, but I was excited at the thought that he had so many albums. Maybe he had a collection as big as Hannes’s. A real music freak.
I walked with him to Njálsgata where he lived. We went up a stairwell and into his apartment. I was a little suspicious — doubts tugged at my mind that such an old guy would own a bunch of punk albums — but the expectation of setting eyes on albums from bands I had always dreamed of, that there would be the world’s best punk albums assembled all in one place, won out. There were no doors in the apartment, just hippie pearl strands hanging from the doorframes. We went into the living room, and the guy said:
“Have a seat.”
Then he went into the kitchen. He didn’t have many albums. I looked carefully through them. There were no punk albums, just stuff by Uriah Heep, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, and some Icelandic crap. The old man came back with two glasses and handed me one; I could smell that it was full of wine.
“Hey, there aren’t any punk albums here.”
“Aren’t there? I was quite sure that I had a lot of punk albums.”
“No, there’s no punk.”
I sat on the couch, the wine glass untouched on the table, and he stood next to me. Suddenly he stroked my hair and said in a low voice:
“You have such beautiful hair.”
I found that really awkward, but I didn’t know how I was meant to react. I’d never experienced an old guy running his hands through my hair. Was he just tremendously nice or a little insane?
“The most beautiful hair,” he said again.
“Uhhh,” I mumbled awkwardly.
Was he a hairdresser, perhaps? Maybe he was just a nice hairdresser who thought that the Rolling Stones were punk? Maybe he was just such a nice guy that he went around at night and helped kids, like the old women from Ananda Marga who were sometimes down at Hallærisplan giving out soup. I had often got hot soup from them. But mainly I wanted to get out of there. The old man looked at me very strangely, and the atmosphere had become significantly uncomfortable. I wondered if I should run out. What exactly did he want? I pointed at the bottle and said:
“What’s this?”
“Just have a drink. Take a sip.”
“But what is it?”
“Just relax and drink. Just drink it.”
“Uhhh,” I said and picked up the glass.
The old man smiled encouragingly at me and went to fetch something. I seized my opportunity and poured the wine into a large plant pot that stood next to me. Maybe he wanted to poison me? Maybe there were sleeping pills in it? This was some mental shit.
I was getting seriously scared. Where had he gone? When would he come back? I got to my feet and wondered what my course of action should be. What was he going to do? Suddenly he came back: he’d stripped off all his clothes and was just in a dressing gown. What the fuck was going on here? Why was this man standing there in a gown and no clothes? This had gotten really silly. I had come there to listen to punk albums but was suddenly standing in an apartment with an old guy in a dressing gown who thought I had beautiful hair. He smiled at me in a friendly way. It was majorly uncomfortable and embarrassing. I was terrified and said: