I don’t have a real frame of reference for understanding him. My life’s been so comfortable. I have parents who love me, support me, and help me whenever I need it. He’s never had it as good as I have. Even though his mother does everything she can to help him now, it was a very different story when he was little. His real dad was a Norwegian soldier his mother met when she was working in Oslo. They were married for a little while, but they divorced when he was still a kid. His mom moved back to Selfoss, where she struggled with being poor, working two jobs to make ends meet. He went to stay with his father one summer, and his dad refused to give him back. He made him call his mom and tell her—in Norwegian—that he wanted to live with him. His dad convinced his mom that her child was better off in Norway, as he had a good salary from the military and a boy needed his father more than his mother in order to become a man. For years, he was at the mercy of a violent drunk, and the only moments of relief were when his father had girlfriends who he beat even more. A distraction. In the end, Child Protective Services got involved when one of his father’s exes reported him. So he was sent back home to his mom. They’ve never talked about what happened, but his mom tries to be good to him, maybe as a way of compensating for what happened to him as a kid. But it’s like he’s angrier with her than he is with his dad.

That’s why he was so weird when he met my parents; he’s not used to being around normal people, a typical family like us. I’m going to help him. I’ve always had it so good that it’s easy enough for me to shoulder a little of the pain he’s carried for so long. I’ll make it better.

The Game I

The Game I

One night, we went out with one of his childhood friends for drinks downtown at Kaffibarinn. I got the impression that his friend was a very lonely guy. He’d never had a girlfriend, and it seemed like he couldn’t speak to women without making some sort of horrible blunder. He had recently gotten into a book called The Game about pickup artists who use a variety of tricks and techniques to bait women into hooking up. In the book, men are encouraged to toy with women’s insecurities. If the player is interested in a woman and she’s got a friend, for example, he’s supposed to shower her friend with praise and give the target the cold shoulder.