“We each own our own bodies, and I think as long as we don’t harm one another, we ought to be able to do what we please. As far as the exhibitionist needs that I have, I think I can satisfy [them] in a socially acceptable way by donating to the museum. I hope nobody thinks negatively about me… I like to think that I’m a pretty decent guy,” he says, so sadly and so sincerely that I feel a little bad for laughing at him.

Sigurdsson calls Mitchell “attention-seeking,” and says he doesn’t think Mitchell will really go through with the operation. He hasn’t yet. All the other human donors seem to be on better terms with the museum—they’re friends, according to Sigurdsson.

With the acquisition of Arason’s penis, Hjartarson retires, his dream fulfilled, and leaves the museum to his only son, Sigurdsson, who has been the curator since 2011.

“I have three sisters,” Sigurdsson says. “So it’s always been a joke, ‘You’re the next king of penises in Iceland.’”

Though the collection is technically whole now, Sigurdsson says there will be some room for improvement with future homo sapien specimens. Something went wrong with the removal of Arason’s donation—Hjartarson wasn’t able to oversee it, and as a result, it doesn’t look much like you’d expect. More like an indistinct mass of flesh in a jar than a recognizable human penis.

“If my father had been there he would’ve closed the wound in the back and maybe stretched it a little or something. To make it look more like it should be,” Sigurdsson says. “When it’s been [in formaldehyde] for two hours or more, you can’t do much with it…We learned from this experience, you know. I won’t let that happen again.”

Walking through the museum, it’s clear that it understands and capitalizes on the fact that its draw is largely the tee-hee factor of rooms full of penises, exemplified by those obnoxious dudes who rode the bus with me. For example, it displays and sells in its gift shop an animatronic flasher in a trench coat with a motion sensor who gets a boner and makes rude comments as you walk by. He’s labeled “Inappropriate Man.” I hate the Inappropriate Man, who I keep accidentally setting off when I try to read an informative placard on the wall.

But there is a strange tension between the spectacle and the scientific. The spectacle gets people in the door, but the museum’s purpose seems to be more sincere. The “About” section of its website states: “Now, thanks to The Icelandic Phallological Museum, it is finally possible for individuals to undertake serious study into the field of phallology in an organized, scientific fashion.”

It’s certainly not pornographic. The only “erotic” section of the museum is in a small glass case covered with a black cloth. A sign asks you to please replace the cloth after you look inside. I was afraid it would be filled with hardcore porn, but it’s actually just a few small sculptures of people having sex, many of them fairly abstract. You can see the museum’s efforts to keep things tasteful warring with the desire to give the people what they came for. Much of the less-tasteful paraphernalia, shot glasses and t-shirts branded with penises, can be found in the gift shop. (Something’s gotta pay the bills.) But for the most part, the museum seeks to fight the very taboo that makes it a novelty.