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At dawn—about ten o’clock—I wander
the once-again disturbingly quiet city streets, which now accurately reflect
Van Stein’s
nickname for this city: Wreck-it-up.
The Laugavegur and
surrounding streets have become a cesspool during the wee hours.
I’d
concerned myself with finding a urinal, six hours earlier, but the natives
simply unzipped their flies, hosed the streets, and now it takes serious focus
to avoid patches of frozen urine and vomit along the sidewalks.
I count twenty-two patches on one short
block.
The picture windows of
shop-fronts that are not
shattered are cracked like elaborate spider webs.
Expulsion
Therapy: The release of bodily fluids to
stave off anxiety and commitment to the local insane asylum, known as Kleppur.
Two cappuccinos served by Heidi at Café
de Paris bring me back to life.
I am
disgruntled with myself for allowing the runtur to put me to bed, not
the other way around. But I still have
tonight. And my sanity. I think.
Back at Hotel Holt, Van Stein knocks
my door late morning. “I need coffee,”
he begs, bags forming beneath bloodshot eyes, wisps of hair the shape of a
butterfly looking for further lift-off
Floater appears; he, too, in need
of caffeine. We stroll to a bookstore
café.
“After you left…” Floater is
shaking his head, “we ended up at that Sirkus place. Even PT Barnum and all the frigging Ringling
Brothers would be amazed.”
“Yeah, they have a beach garden in
their backyard,” says Van Stein. “Sand
and beach chairs and umbrellas. Unless I
was hallucinating.”
Floater nods vigorously. “I saw it, too. And the owner’s son–he
offered Erik a free drink in exchange for a blowjob.”
NASA’s toilet loiterers, a free drink for a blowjob?
Had the Vikings really descended into a
nation of gay blades?
But the owner’s son did not
discriminate. A nubile blonde female
obliged him for a drink.
Says Van Stein: “I told her, Hey, I’d have bought
you two drinks for one of those!”
“Walking home at four-thirty was a
war zone,” says Floater. “Guys pissing
everywhere, throwing glasses.”
“Caught that,” I say.
The National Gallery is closed, so
we’re left with the
Icelandic Institute of Phallology–a
fancy name for giggle-stick gallery:
the only penis museum in the world, housing a collection of a
hundred-plus wieners from whales, dolphins, seals, goats, sheep–and even a polar
bear.
Sigurdor Hjartarson, the institute’s phallologist, is feared by whales,
dolphins, seals, goats, sheep–and
even polar bears.
We hoof back beneath setting sun, mid-afternoon.
“I will never think of
the male anatomy the same, now I know what’s out
there,” says Van Stein. “I have been
somewhere most people haven’t.”
“What did you make of the curator?”
asks Floater.
Van Stein: “What can you say about a guy who collects
dicks? Kind of cocky? Broke the penal code? Something very traumatic must have happened
to this guy at an early age.”
It’s already dark by the time we reach our hotel.
Van Stein dons three layers for the profound
mission before him...
...to paint Klepp
Psychiatric Institute beneath a full moon.
