Huh? Next winter? Was she firing me? That’s how I was fired from my first job, something I would go on to experience many, many times, over and over again. This was only the first of numerous jobs I would be fired from. I was once again unemployed and could no longer fund my shopping trips and cigarettes. Good advice had become costly.
GIRLS & TRAVEL SICKNESS TABLETS
The rumor was that all us kids at Hlemmur were on drugs. That was a gross exaggeration given how limited the supply of drugs was. There was just normal stuff: sniffing glue, markers, and gas. Occasionally maybe you’d get a hit from a hash pipe, but that was rare. One drug we used quite a lot, though, was travel sickness tablets. The tablets were sold in pharmacies, but they wouldn’t sell you more than ten tablets at once. So you’d just go into a pharmacy, say you were really carsick, and ask if it was possible to get something for motion sickness. You’d get sickness tablets. Then you just played the game again, went to the next pharmacy, and got more sickness tablets.
“Hi. I’m going on a trip…with my dad…to Patreksfjörður. And…I get so carsick, and this kid I know said it was possible to get some kind of motion sickness pills.”
“Yes, yes, there are tablets for that. Here: sea- and carsickness tablets.”
“Ahh, okay.”
And so you immediately had twenty tablets, enough to get a good high. You’d swallow some ten to fifteen of them. The effect: hallucinations. Enormously large visual and auditory hallucinations, a strange and alien state.
Like most boys, I was interested in girls, but it was just that I was so timid and afraid of them. Girls were exotic and mysterious beings who thought and behaved according to strange and incomprehensible laws. Moreover, I found that girls did not have any particular interest in me. I had had some conversations with girls, but they were such weird conversations. Sometimes some girl sat with me at Bústaðir and began to ask me about something connected with me, what I was up to and what I was interested in. My mind went flying. Why was she asking me this? Had anyone put her up to it? Or was she just curious? Then it happened one time that a guy who was with me at Rétto spoke to me and told me that these two girls we went to school with had asked him to invite me over while they were babysitting; they would like that. I was astonished. This guy was not an idiot. We weren’t especially friends, but he was a good, decent guy who had helped me sometimes when I was being teased.
“Why do they want me to come?” I asked, cynical.
“I think one of them has a crush on you,” he said.
Crush on me? How could someone have a crush on me? Who could have a crush on me? That was exciting. Some girl had a crush on me. The thought of going and meeting them was exciting but frightening at the same time. What should you do? What did they want you to do? Would we make popcorn and play a game? Or perhaps we’d listen to music and kiss? I’d never kissed a girl but still had seen quite a few kids kissing, even with tongues. I was totally up for it if that was what she wanted. But maybe we were just going to make popcorn. But what were you supposed to talk to girls about? I rarely had any interest in talking to girls and thought they usually just talked about uninteresting and boring things. I had never heard of a girl with knowledge of or interest in anarchism. But I would be so happy to talk about anything if I could kiss her. The more I thought about it, the more nervous I became. This would totally fail, for sure. I would be so nervous and awkward and definitely say something that they found silly. Maybe they would all start laughing at me. In movies, kids are always just doing something and then suddenly they kiss. I did not quite know how this contagion of kissing happened. Wouldn’t it be reasonable to ask people if you could kiss them? But “Can I kiss you?” sounded lame. “Can I make out with you and fondle your breasts?” was even worse.
As the days passed and the evening approached, I became increasingly confused and nervous. I decided to go to the pharmacy and buy some sickness tablets so I could be relaxed on the evening in question. That night, I took a low dose, just right for some small visual and auditory hallucinations. When I was in that frame, I generally found people fun and relaxed. They, of course, didn’t know I’d taken tablets, and just found me interesting and amusingly bewildered. Sickness tablets also allowed me to be free from cares and full of courage. There would be no problem kissing on travel sickness tablets! It would happen by itself, and it would just be fun. I met my friend up at the shops after taking a few more tablets, and I also brought some more with me, just in case. Maybe the other kids would want to do tablets, and also maybe I’d need to take a few more.
After we got to the house, the girls invited us in; they’d already got the children to sleep. We were inside the living room, just chatting. I only knew these girls from Rétto. They weren’t disco freaks, just your typical girls. We talked about the teachers and how stupid they were. The travel sickness tablets didn’t seem to be working. Strangely, the girl who had a crush on me was looking at me, which was both comfortable and uncomfortable at the same time, her eyes searching. She asked me about one thing and another, and I tried to answer as best as I could. Did she want to kiss me? Should I take the initiative? Do guys always take the initiative? I wondered if I should try to kiss her. But she was talking. What would she do if I tried to kiss her? Would she get mad? I was getting so nervous and didn’t know what I was supposed to do, so I excused myself, went into the bathroom, and thought about things. I decided to take some more sickness tablets and get going with it. I saw the other boy and girl were kissing on the other couch. The girl with a crush on me was sitting on the couch and looked at me questioningly. I sat next to her.
“Everything okay?” she asked.
“Sure,” I replied, awkwardly.
The excitement increased. Were we about to kiss? I peeped sideways at the pair on the couch, who were clasped in an embrace, their tongues up inside one another. How had it started? I shouldn’t have gone off to the bathroom. Suddenly a hallucination poured over me. Someone was behind the curtains and whispering to me, but I could hardly make out the words. “Jón,” whispered the voice. I giggled nervously.
“What?” asked the girl and smiled.
“Nothing,” I replied.
“Just Siggi the Punk,” I muttered and laughed.
“Huh?” she asked, surprised.
Siggi the Punk was hiding behind the curtains and whispering to me. The room was moving, and the furniture waddled back and forth. The girl looked questioningly and surprisedly at me. I was clearly about to fuck this up. Then everything went black.
All of a sudden I’m inside the kitchen at home, sitting at the kitchen table, and Adam Ant is lying on top of the kitchen cabinet with his hand under his cheek, gawping at me. I glance at Mom, who clearly can’t see Adam Ant.
“Adam Ant?” I ask, taken aback.
Adam Ant begins to laugh. “Stand and deliver,” he shouts at me. I’m starting to laugh, but my mom doesn’t think it’s funny.
“What tablets have you been taking?”
“What? I’ve not taken any tablets.”
Adam Ant disappears, and someone else comes and whispers to me. Mom tries to talk to me, but I cannot hear what she says because of the whispering. My mom has a worried expression. The floor rocks back and forth. Mom stands up, walks into the telephone room, and says something into the phone. There are three people inside the room. Definitely some friend of Mom. I call out to them:
“Hello.”
No answer. Adam Ant is nowhere in sight. The Sex Pistols are standing outside the kitchen window and looking inside. How great that they’ve turned up.