Monday, January 26, 2009
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Love, loss and trusting your first instincts
“Dude, call it what it is. You’re trying to get back together with her.”
“What makes you say that?”
Louis is in denial about the status of his renewed friendship with his former girlfriend Carmen. She is back in Jo’burg for a brief visit, before she heads back to London. She holds a mysterious power over her ex-boyfriend.
“You’re bunking work so you can drive to Vanderbijlpark and meet her for lunch. Who does that?”
His mate Butch is trying to get him to admit.
“No-no, china. We just good friends.”
“Ah, come on, man. Be honest with yourself. She’s your ex, she’s been in town for two days and you’ve been chasing her around the place like a pig hunting truffles.”
“What are truffles, anyway?”
“Does she know you’re trying to get her back? Or is she just using you as dial-a-date?”
“Dude, I don’t know. I don’t think she’s over her last ex. The oke died.”
“What from”
“Dunno. She doesn’t wanna talk about it.”
“Then she’s definitely not over him.”
By 2am that evening, Louis is beginning to agree with Butch that Carmen is far from over her last boyfriend, the one after he had broken up with her.
As he gloomily watches Vanderbijlpark’s Emerald Casino gradually empty out around them, his role in Carmen’s life becomes all too clear to him. He is now that thing he so did not want to be. He is a shoulder to cry on.
He is a nice guy. Someone to turn to in a time of need. In a throbbing, agonising irony, he is exactly what he’s been claiming to be. He is just a good friend.
What he hadn’t known about Carmen’s ex – Colin, his name was – he certainly knows now.
The guy died in someone’s lounge. The guys came home late from a nightclub, sat on the couch to watch TV and passed out. He woke up dead.
No one knew what killed him. His heart just stopped. There was no trace of drugs in his body, he was 28 years old, and a regular gym-goer. It was just one of those things that happen. People die.
What complicated the situation was that he had died in the lounge of another woman. The infamous Tatiana, “That Russian bitch”, as she was known in Carmen’s telling of the story.
It seems clear to Louis that Colin was conducting an affair with Tatiana when he inconveniently died in her lounge. But Carmen never raises this possibility, so neither does he. He merely nods and beckons the barman closer, as Carmen rants on about how, “She must have killed him. She put a spell on him. I know she did.”
“Mmmm. Ja. Shame, man.”
All that remains to be seen is how much Carmen will be able to drink before she deems herself ready to be taken home.
Then, somewhere around 3am, the barman takes pity on him and calls last drinks. Louis begins jingling his keys, hopefully. But Carmen has other plans…
“I’m far too tired to possibly drive back to Jo’burg. Come, why don’t you get us a room at the hotel. We can spend the night here.”
For no other reason besides extreme fatigue, Louis jumps at the offer. Within 20 minutes they are tucking themselves in, a chaste couple of metres apart in separate beds.
In the second screaming irony of the night, Louis finds himself alone in a hotel room with the woman of his dreams. Sadly, he’s now convinced she’s more than a bit loopy. He wouldn’t dream of trying anything.
As he drifts off to merciful sleep, Louis thinks to himself that on further reflection, it might have been the right idea to break up with Carmen all those years ago.
He was correct too, it had been the right thing to do.
Sadly, he is now back in the same position, sharing a room with the slightly loopy Carmen whom he wronged back in 2001 by sleeping with her best friend.
Around midday the next day, Louis’s body is found in the hotel room by a housekeeper. He is dead. His heart has just stopped. There are no traces of drugs in his body. It’s just one of those things.
By that time Carmen’s flight back to London has already taken off.
“What makes you say that?”
Louis is in denial about the status of his renewed friendship with his former girlfriend Carmen. She is back in Jo’burg for a brief visit, before she heads back to London. She holds a mysterious power over her ex-boyfriend.
“You’re bunking work so you can drive to Vanderbijlpark and meet her for lunch. Who does that?”
His mate Butch is trying to get him to admit.
“No-no, china. We just good friends.”
“Ah, come on, man. Be honest with yourself. She’s your ex, she’s been in town for two days and you’ve been chasing her around the place like a pig hunting truffles.”
“What are truffles, anyway?”
“Does she know you’re trying to get her back? Or is she just using you as dial-a-date?”
“Dude, I don’t know. I don’t think she’s over her last ex. The oke died.”
“What from”
“Dunno. She doesn’t wanna talk about it.”
“Then she’s definitely not over him.”
By 2am that evening, Louis is beginning to agree with Butch that Carmen is far from over her last boyfriend, the one after he had broken up with her.
As he gloomily watches Vanderbijlpark’s Emerald Casino gradually empty out around them, his role in Carmen’s life becomes all too clear to him. He is now that thing he so did not want to be. He is a shoulder to cry on.
He is a nice guy. Someone to turn to in a time of need. In a throbbing, agonising irony, he is exactly what he’s been claiming to be. He is just a good friend.
What he hadn’t known about Carmen’s ex – Colin, his name was – he certainly knows now.
The guy died in someone’s lounge. The guys came home late from a nightclub, sat on the couch to watch TV and passed out. He woke up dead.
No one knew what killed him. His heart just stopped. There was no trace of drugs in his body, he was 28 years old, and a regular gym-goer. It was just one of those things that happen. People die.
What complicated the situation was that he had died in the lounge of another woman. The infamous Tatiana, “That Russian bitch”, as she was known in Carmen’s telling of the story.
It seems clear to Louis that Colin was conducting an affair with Tatiana when he inconveniently died in her lounge. But Carmen never raises this possibility, so neither does he. He merely nods and beckons the barman closer, as Carmen rants on about how, “She must have killed him. She put a spell on him. I know she did.”
“Mmmm. Ja. Shame, man.”
All that remains to be seen is how much Carmen will be able to drink before she deems herself ready to be taken home.
Then, somewhere around 3am, the barman takes pity on him and calls last drinks. Louis begins jingling his keys, hopefully. But Carmen has other plans…
“I’m far too tired to possibly drive back to Jo’burg. Come, why don’t you get us a room at the hotel. We can spend the night here.”
For no other reason besides extreme fatigue, Louis jumps at the offer. Within 20 minutes they are tucking themselves in, a chaste couple of metres apart in separate beds.
In the second screaming irony of the night, Louis finds himself alone in a hotel room with the woman of his dreams. Sadly, he’s now convinced she’s more than a bit loopy. He wouldn’t dream of trying anything.
As he drifts off to merciful sleep, Louis thinks to himself that on further reflection, it might have been the right idea to break up with Carmen all those years ago.
He was correct too, it had been the right thing to do.
Sadly, he is now back in the same position, sharing a room with the slightly loopy Carmen whom he wronged back in 2001 by sleeping with her best friend.
Around midday the next day, Louis’s body is found in the hotel room by a housekeeper. He is dead. His heart has just stopped. There are no traces of drugs in his body. It’s just one of those things.
By that time Carmen’s flight back to London has already taken off.
Getting what you want, and other rites of passage
It was a simple moment, nothing spectacular. Just an evening conversation between father and son.
Michael said, “I think I’d like to go to the Download Festival. I need to see Stone Sour live. The okes are making such killer music right now. They’re probably the best in the business at the moment.”
“Mmm. Good band, hey,” said his dad Angus, without looking up from his copy of The Star. ‘Tow truckers bribe cops’ bellowed the ten-column headline. The evening edition hadn’t changed much from the morning.
“Ja, great band,” continued Michael. “The best.”
Meanwhile, in the Grayston Drive Woolworths Food outlet, Angus’s wife Shelly was doing the shopping with their other son Shaun.
The Super M chocolate milks were in the dairy aisle right next to the full-cream litre bottles.
“C’n’ive one of these, Ma?”
“No, my boy. You’ve already got a juice and a two-litre Coke. Put it back, Shaunie!”
“Aw, Ma-a! You never let me get anything. I don’t care, I’ll get it with my own money. I don’t need you!”
And with that, Shaun flung the Super M into the shopping basket with an impetuous flick of his 14-year-old wrist.
“Stop shouting, Shaun!”
Meanwhile, back in the family TV room in greater Morningside, Michael was drifting slowly but surely towards his moment of truth.
“Ja, it’s just that if I want the band to succeed, I’ve got to see what the best guys in the world are doing, so we can be world class…”
“Mmm…” responded his father. “Where’s this festival?”
“The UK. It’s in June.”
“Oh. Then you better start saving,” continued Angus, now focused on a page three piece about a radio news editor who’d been stabbed at his home in Melville. “I’m sure those air tickets won’t be cheap.”
“No,” Michael tried again. “That’s the thing, hey.”
Back in Woolies, Shelly and Shaun were at the tills already. Shaun had secured his Super M, and was going for a final Lunch Bar.
“Come on, Ma. You can take it out of my pocket money.”
“Oh, for Pete’s sake,” snapped Shelley, throwing the chocolate into the pile of groceries the cashier was busily swiping. By this time Shaun had begun wandering towards the exit. She clearly wouldn’t be getting any help with the bags.
She took a deep breath. Shoo. Another ten years and this one would be off their hands too.
Michael, meanwhile, a decade older than his junior sibling, was beginning to see that crossroads approaching at a scary rate.
“Aw, come on, Dad,” he tried forlornly, desperately. This in a tone Angus hadn’t been subjected to since the notorious mountain-bike incident of 1999. It was time to put down the paper.
“Look, Michael,” he began. “You’re 25. If you want to be a full-time musician, you’re going to have to start funding it yourself. I’m afraid you’ve already had the last of your pocket money.
“Ag, Dad,” Michael adopted a more grown-up tone. “I’m not earning. How do you expect me to pay for…”
“That’s exactly it, my boy. I think you’re starting to get it. It’s time to find a job. You’ve tried three different degrees, I’ve been buying you band equipment since Grade 10. You’ve never paid us a day’s rent in your life…”
“Rent?” Michael was flabbergasted. “But you’re my parents…”
“We are your parents,” replied Angus, a little too smugly. “And as your parent, it’s my duty to inform you that you’re now officially grown up. No more hand-outs. As from now, you’re off the payroll.
He stood up from the couch and left the room with an air of finality. He had to try not to do it with too much of a spring in his step. It just felt so good to finally say it. He walked to the drinks cabinet and fixed himself a scotch. The house was dead silent.
One down and one to go, thought Angus.
In the family X5 on the way back from the shops, things were equally quiet. Michael wasn’t allowed his Lunch Bar until after supper.
Shelly took another of her deep breaths. She wondered if Angus had had that talk with Michael yet.
In the passenger seat Shaun plugged his earphones in and cranked Stone Sour at a level he knew would be audible to his mom. Punishment for her being so unfair.
She just kept her eyes on the road and repeated her silent mantra.
One down and one to go.
Michael said, “I think I’d like to go to the Download Festival. I need to see Stone Sour live. The okes are making such killer music right now. They’re probably the best in the business at the moment.”
“Mmm. Good band, hey,” said his dad Angus, without looking up from his copy of The Star. ‘Tow truckers bribe cops’ bellowed the ten-column headline. The evening edition hadn’t changed much from the morning.
“Ja, great band,” continued Michael. “The best.”
Meanwhile, in the Grayston Drive Woolworths Food outlet, Angus’s wife Shelly was doing the shopping with their other son Shaun.
The Super M chocolate milks were in the dairy aisle right next to the full-cream litre bottles.
“C’n’ive one of these, Ma?”
“No, my boy. You’ve already got a juice and a two-litre Coke. Put it back, Shaunie!”
“Aw, Ma-a! You never let me get anything. I don’t care, I’ll get it with my own money. I don’t need you!”
And with that, Shaun flung the Super M into the shopping basket with an impetuous flick of his 14-year-old wrist.
“Stop shouting, Shaun!”
Meanwhile, back in the family TV room in greater Morningside, Michael was drifting slowly but surely towards his moment of truth.
“Ja, it’s just that if I want the band to succeed, I’ve got to see what the best guys in the world are doing, so we can be world class…”
“Mmm…” responded his father. “Where’s this festival?”
“The UK. It’s in June.”
“Oh. Then you better start saving,” continued Angus, now focused on a page three piece about a radio news editor who’d been stabbed at his home in Melville. “I’m sure those air tickets won’t be cheap.”
“No,” Michael tried again. “That’s the thing, hey.”
Back in Woolies, Shelly and Shaun were at the tills already. Shaun had secured his Super M, and was going for a final Lunch Bar.
“Come on, Ma. You can take it out of my pocket money.”
“Oh, for Pete’s sake,” snapped Shelley, throwing the chocolate into the pile of groceries the cashier was busily swiping. By this time Shaun had begun wandering towards the exit. She clearly wouldn’t be getting any help with the bags.
She took a deep breath. Shoo. Another ten years and this one would be off their hands too.
Michael, meanwhile, a decade older than his junior sibling, was beginning to see that crossroads approaching at a scary rate.
“Aw, come on, Dad,” he tried forlornly, desperately. This in a tone Angus hadn’t been subjected to since the notorious mountain-bike incident of 1999. It was time to put down the paper.
“Look, Michael,” he began. “You’re 25. If you want to be a full-time musician, you’re going to have to start funding it yourself. I’m afraid you’ve already had the last of your pocket money.
“Ag, Dad,” Michael adopted a more grown-up tone. “I’m not earning. How do you expect me to pay for…”
“That’s exactly it, my boy. I think you’re starting to get it. It’s time to find a job. You’ve tried three different degrees, I’ve been buying you band equipment since Grade 10. You’ve never paid us a day’s rent in your life…”
“Rent?” Michael was flabbergasted. “But you’re my parents…”
“We are your parents,” replied Angus, a little too smugly. “And as your parent, it’s my duty to inform you that you’re now officially grown up. No more hand-outs. As from now, you’re off the payroll.
He stood up from the couch and left the room with an air of finality. He had to try not to do it with too much of a spring in his step. It just felt so good to finally say it. He walked to the drinks cabinet and fixed himself a scotch. The house was dead silent.
One down and one to go, thought Angus.
In the family X5 on the way back from the shops, things were equally quiet. Michael wasn’t allowed his Lunch Bar until after supper.
Shelly took another of her deep breaths. She wondered if Angus had had that talk with Michael yet.
In the passenger seat Shaun plugged his earphones in and cranked Stone Sour at a level he knew would be audible to his mom. Punishment for her being so unfair.
She just kept her eyes on the road and repeated her silent mantra.
One down and one to go.
Moving in, moving out and moving on
Awkward didn’t even begin to cover it. But desperation is the mother of all forwardness, and thus Tony had basically invited himself.
The truth was, Jo’burg was the last city in South Africa that would have him, so, hey. Pete was moving to Jo’burg.
He’d had a bit of a misunderstanding with his folks in PE, he’d been fired from the only newspaper group in Cape Town… And now the cops were looking for him in Durban, following a money-making venture that had left a few customers less than satisfied.
That left Jozi. And since Errol was the only person living in Jo’burg whose phone number he had, Errol was the lucky winner of a new houseguest in the form of Tony Fick, originally from PE.
Errol and Tony had been to Newton Park pre-primary school together, and their moms belonged to the same book club in PE, so they were like family friends. Even though they hadn’t seen each other for about 11 years.
At first Errol was very cool about it. He agreed to let Tony stay at his place until he found a spot of his own, and he kindly gave him real-time phone directions him all the way into Troyeville.
“Take the R21. Take the R21! You should see Eastgate on your left. D’you see Eastgate? Never mind! Just keep going. That should turn into Broadway… Just trust me, keep going. Try not to stop at the robots…”
Errol shared with a oke called Quinton. That was fine, because they had a nice big couch and Tony had his sleeping bag.
The okes welcomed him with the leftovers of some pasta, they watched some Prison Break, and the next thing it was time for bed. Remembering his manners, Tony was, like, “Ay, thanks so much for letting me dos on the couch.”
“Oh no! Don’t be stupid,” says Quinton. “You can have my room.”
He doesn’t elaborate. Tony opens his mouth, about to enquire where Quinton would be sleeping, but there’s only one place he could be sleeping. And it’s none of Tony’s business, he’s just the houseguest.
Errol and Quinton are more than just housemates.
So Tony gets Quinton’s bed, and spends a fitful evening contemplating what might have taken place on it.
The next day, Quinton has something to share with him.
Errol goes off to work, which gives the two of them ample time to hang out and get to know each other.
“Do you know that we’ve actually broken up?” Quinton say-asks while they’re doing the dishes and listening to Mansfield wrap up his morning show on Highveld. “but don’t worry, I’m going to win him back…”
“Jeez, I had no idea,” Tony stutters, “I’ll move back onto the couch immediately!”
“No, no, no,” Quinton insists. “You’re our guest. I wouldn’t dream of it.”
So Tony spent his first two weeks in Jo’burg alternately guilt tripping about interfering in the endgame of a dying relationship and wondering how well his mom’s book-club mate really knew her son.
By week three Errol and Quinton were having nightly domestic spats and Tony was so desperate to get a place of his own that he walked into the Star newsroom and offered to dash sub for free until they could afford to pay him.
Desperation is also the handmaiden of diligence. The Star night editor was so impressed with Tony’s dedication that he offered him a downtable subbing job. Tony got his first paycheque a month after arriving in Jozi, and he moved out the day after that. Followed the time-honoured path of Joburg newcomers from Troyeville to Melville to the suburbs.
To everyone’s great benefit, the holiday club scheme that had seen Tony railroaded out of Durban was mothballed indefinitely.
The next time Tony and Errol met was on a quiet Thursday night at Capital Records in Rosebank, About three years had passed.
It was just Errol, no sign of Quinton. Errol looked older, he’d gone completely grey, and he had a sad look about him.
Errol seemed down because simply seeing Tony again had reminded him of Quinton. It seemed that even saying something like, “Thanks for letting me stay at your place that time,” would have been in bad taste.”
Tony made his excuses and left. And he stopped going to Capital Records for a while. Errol did too.
People move on in Joburg too. And the beauty of it is that no one has to leave town.
The truth was, Jo’burg was the last city in South Africa that would have him, so, hey. Pete was moving to Jo’burg.
He’d had a bit of a misunderstanding with his folks in PE, he’d been fired from the only newspaper group in Cape Town… And now the cops were looking for him in Durban, following a money-making venture that had left a few customers less than satisfied.
That left Jozi. And since Errol was the only person living in Jo’burg whose phone number he had, Errol was the lucky winner of a new houseguest in the form of Tony Fick, originally from PE.
Errol and Tony had been to Newton Park pre-primary school together, and their moms belonged to the same book club in PE, so they were like family friends. Even though they hadn’t seen each other for about 11 years.
At first Errol was very cool about it. He agreed to let Tony stay at his place until he found a spot of his own, and he kindly gave him real-time phone directions him all the way into Troyeville.
“Take the R21. Take the R21! You should see Eastgate on your left. D’you see Eastgate? Never mind! Just keep going. That should turn into Broadway… Just trust me, keep going. Try not to stop at the robots…”
Errol shared with a oke called Quinton. That was fine, because they had a nice big couch and Tony had his sleeping bag.
The okes welcomed him with the leftovers of some pasta, they watched some Prison Break, and the next thing it was time for bed. Remembering his manners, Tony was, like, “Ay, thanks so much for letting me dos on the couch.”
“Oh no! Don’t be stupid,” says Quinton. “You can have my room.”
He doesn’t elaborate. Tony opens his mouth, about to enquire where Quinton would be sleeping, but there’s only one place he could be sleeping. And it’s none of Tony’s business, he’s just the houseguest.
Errol and Quinton are more than just housemates.
So Tony gets Quinton’s bed, and spends a fitful evening contemplating what might have taken place on it.
The next day, Quinton has something to share with him.
Errol goes off to work, which gives the two of them ample time to hang out and get to know each other.
“Do you know that we’ve actually broken up?” Quinton say-asks while they’re doing the dishes and listening to Mansfield wrap up his morning show on Highveld. “but don’t worry, I’m going to win him back…”
“Jeez, I had no idea,” Tony stutters, “I’ll move back onto the couch immediately!”
“No, no, no,” Quinton insists. “You’re our guest. I wouldn’t dream of it.”
So Tony spent his first two weeks in Jo’burg alternately guilt tripping about interfering in the endgame of a dying relationship and wondering how well his mom’s book-club mate really knew her son.
By week three Errol and Quinton were having nightly domestic spats and Tony was so desperate to get a place of his own that he walked into the Star newsroom and offered to dash sub for free until they could afford to pay him.
Desperation is also the handmaiden of diligence. The Star night editor was so impressed with Tony’s dedication that he offered him a downtable subbing job. Tony got his first paycheque a month after arriving in Jozi, and he moved out the day after that. Followed the time-honoured path of Joburg newcomers from Troyeville to Melville to the suburbs.
To everyone’s great benefit, the holiday club scheme that had seen Tony railroaded out of Durban was mothballed indefinitely.
The next time Tony and Errol met was on a quiet Thursday night at Capital Records in Rosebank, About three years had passed.
It was just Errol, no sign of Quinton. Errol looked older, he’d gone completely grey, and he had a sad look about him.
Errol seemed down because simply seeing Tony again had reminded him of Quinton. It seemed that even saying something like, “Thanks for letting me stay at your place that time,” would have been in bad taste.”
Tony made his excuses and left. And he stopped going to Capital Records for a while. Errol did too.
People move on in Joburg too. And the beauty of it is that no one has to leave town.
Monday, January 19, 2009
The Blues, the red top and moment of truth
Liz was at the gym when she first saw him. He arrived with the entire Blues rugby team for a warmdown at the Sandton Personal Training Gym.
It pretty much brought the gym to a standstill – 26 enormous men of varying levels of Polynesian ancestry entering the swimming-pool area, stripping to their shorts and then slowly climbing into the pool.
She was on the exercise bikes when she spotted him. He was shorter than the others, but wider, with a vast Maori tattoo across the upper right quadrant of his chest. He wore his hair in tumbling curls down his broad shoulders.
His deep-set eyes were hooded with concentration as the team solemnly executed their routine of wading down the length of the swimming pool five times. But Liz’s bike was the one right opposite the pool ladder, so she knew it was only a matter of time…
Sure enough, the time came, and as the gorgeous man hoisted himself out of the pool, his muscles rippling with the exertion, he glanced up, and they looked into each other’s eyes.
For Liz, time stopped.
He had a caramel complexion, full, chocolate lips, and a plaster across his left eyebrow, which was raised in a mischievous way that reminded her of the The Rock.
Her monitor told her that her heart rate had gone up to 150bpm.
“Who’s that?” she gasped to the guy on the bike next to her.
“That’s Pete Paki. He’s the eighthman.”
From that moment, the course of the next two weeks of Liz’s life were determined. She would be stalking Pete Paki.
She timed her departure from the gym to coincide with that of the Blues team bus, which returned to the team hotel, the Sandton Holiday Inn on Katherine Street
From super14.com, she determined that the Blues would be playing the Cheetahs that weekend and the Cats the one after. After that she went out and bought a bright red, low-cut top.
It was the kind of top that would turn heads no matter what colour it was, but the colour – a kind of luminous magenta – ensured Liz’s bust would be the main attraction in any room she found herself in.
She immediately headed for the Holiday Inn, where she sipped a cocktail at the hotel bar until, inevitably, The Blues came down for lunch. Sure enough, Pete Paki was among them.
Liz turned and watched the team parade past. As Pete Paki passed, she brushed her left hand through her hair and tossed it over her shoulder. Again they shared a look.
She spent the rest of Wednesday hanging around Sandton City in her red top. Foreign sports teams are famous for their shopping trips to Jo’burg’s 30-year-old shopping mecca.
And eventually, sure enough, there was Pete Paki in the cellphone shop down from Mugg & Bean.
She wandered in, as if not noticing him at first. Then shrieked with recognition. “God! I keep bumping into you. Who are you guys!”
“Rugby players, ay,” responded Pete, quick as a flash. “The Blues, from New Zealand.”
“Oh, great. Well welcome to South Africa,” she gushed, a little more than she should’ve.
That Saturday she filled up her car and headed down south, to Bloemfontein, where she again donned her red shirt, then found a seat near the players’ tunnel. Pete Paki could not help noticing her both times he left the field.
By the next week, their paths had crossed three more times.
Pete was thinking, “If we can put enough pressure on Pretorius, we’ll take their backline out of the game. He’ll be forced to kick and it’ll become a lineout battle.”
Liz was thinking, “I’ll start calling myself Elizabeth. Elizabeth Paki.”
By the time the Cats had beaten the Blues 34-33, and the post-match function was into its fourth hour, Pete Paki was ripe for the picking.
As he lurked in the corner behind a potplant, rueing the missed tackled that had let Wylie Human in for the winning try, a buxom woman in a luminous magenta top sidled up to him.
“Hey, Mr Bluesman,” she said with a sly grin.
“Have you been following me?” he asked, even though he knew the answer.
“Mmm. I must admit, I have,” she said. “But don’t worry. I’ll let you get even with me.”
And with that, she turned and walked out of the room.
All he had to do was follow her…
Pete Paki finished his drink and for a moment, looked deep inside himself.
Stretched truths and affirmative dating actions
“I really told a shocker this time, hey.”
And she had too. Of all the lies that Anneline had told, in all her years of telling lies, this was the doozie. This one just took the cake.
On the plane back from conference in Cape Town, she’d found herself up front in business class with the two sales executives, Thandeka and Queen. Being newly hired, she’d seen it as an ideal opportunity to impress her superiors.
To her horror, the conversation had taken a swift turn into Xhosa – or perhaps it was Zulu – minutes after take-off. With the town of Darling still visible below them, she found herself marooned on a monolingual island in her window seat.
Dying to make some kind of impact, and with an isiXhosa vocab of about 12 words, she just about flapped her ears off their hinges trying to make sense of the two women’s conversation.
After half an hour of picking up serious stompies, she determined through their brief lapses into English, that they were talking about men.
“Yuh, hayi! They don’t like to admit they are wrong!” Queen exclaimed at one point, and Annelise saw her gap.
“Yes, they’re so stubborn, hey!” she contributed in a tone that matched her neighbours’ amused exasperation.
There was a beat, as Queen and Thandeka turned and looked at her, as if they’d just noticed the woman with the platinum-blonde bob on their left.
Eventually Queen said in a condescending tone, “Ja, well at least white men are a bit less chauvinistic…”
And they went back to talking in Xhosa, or Zulu, or whatever it was. Anneline enjoys being the centre of attention, so she just couldn’t handle being dismissed like that. She said something she shouldn’t have.
“I wouldn’t know. My boyfriend’s black as well.”
There was another beat, and during this one, Thandeka just about choked on her Johnny Walker.
“Black? Your boyfriend’s black? What’s his name?”
And of course, Anneline had replied, “Thando. He’s from Soweto.”
Without missing any further beats, Queen and Thandeka had insisted on meeting Thando. All of a sudden Anneline was the most popular girl in the company.
In the ensuing week, she found herself invited to dinner with the board at The Meat Company at Melrose Arch. They even brought her along to the strategy session at Riverside Spa. Her star had never shone brighter.
One drawback, of course, was that there was no Thando. She had no boyfriend at all – let alone a black one. She’d been to an all-girls high school, the only boy she’d ever been intimate with had been a snow-white, slightly pimply teenager from Stellenbosch. And frankly she was a bit afraid of black men.
But if she was nothing else, Anneline was ambitious, so here she was, cap in hand at the home of her only black friend.
She wanted one thing from Lesego and one thing only: a boyfriend named Thabo.
“Well I do know one Thabo. But he stays in Bryanston. He works at the Absa call centre. I’m not sure he’s single, though.”
“That doesn’t matter. I only need him for one night. We can break up after that. We’ve got the AdMag awards on Wednesday night. I need to show up with a black man named Thabo. It would help if he was stubborn too.”
“He’s not stubborn at all. He’s actually quite nice. I’d be onto him like a shot if I wasn’t already going out with Gift. D’you want me to introduce you?”
“No, I think I’ll just call the call centre.”
And thus it came to pass that Thabo Mnguni had a call patched through to him from a flirtatious white woman who wanted someone to explain how the bank charges on her Absa account were determined.
He gave her the usual breakdown and commiserated with her about the exorbitant rates she was paying. So “considerate” did she find his service, that she hoped he wouldn’t mind if she was so bold as to ask him out.
Thabo didn’t mind. In fact he was flattered. It was encouraging to know that he still had the old charisma. Who said the visually impaired couldn’t be sexy?
“We’re on for Wednesday night,” he said at last, and then by force of habit… “And thank you for banking with Absa.
“Oh no, it’s my pleasure,” said Anneline. “It’s my pleasure.”
And indeed it would be, for Thabo Mnguni was a lover without equal in all of Bryanston. Affirmative dating would never feel so good.
And she had too. Of all the lies that Anneline had told, in all her years of telling lies, this was the doozie. This one just took the cake.
On the plane back from conference in Cape Town, she’d found herself up front in business class with the two sales executives, Thandeka and Queen. Being newly hired, she’d seen it as an ideal opportunity to impress her superiors.
To her horror, the conversation had taken a swift turn into Xhosa – or perhaps it was Zulu – minutes after take-off. With the town of Darling still visible below them, she found herself marooned on a monolingual island in her window seat.
Dying to make some kind of impact, and with an isiXhosa vocab of about 12 words, she just about flapped her ears off their hinges trying to make sense of the two women’s conversation.
After half an hour of picking up serious stompies, she determined through their brief lapses into English, that they were talking about men.
“Yuh, hayi! They don’t like to admit they are wrong!” Queen exclaimed at one point, and Annelise saw her gap.
“Yes, they’re so stubborn, hey!” she contributed in a tone that matched her neighbours’ amused exasperation.
There was a beat, as Queen and Thandeka turned and looked at her, as if they’d just noticed the woman with the platinum-blonde bob on their left.
Eventually Queen said in a condescending tone, “Ja, well at least white men are a bit less chauvinistic…”
And they went back to talking in Xhosa, or Zulu, or whatever it was. Anneline enjoys being the centre of attention, so she just couldn’t handle being dismissed like that. She said something she shouldn’t have.
“I wouldn’t know. My boyfriend’s black as well.”
There was another beat, and during this one, Thandeka just about choked on her Johnny Walker.
“Black? Your boyfriend’s black? What’s his name?”
And of course, Anneline had replied, “Thando. He’s from Soweto.”
Without missing any further beats, Queen and Thandeka had insisted on meeting Thando. All of a sudden Anneline was the most popular girl in the company.
In the ensuing week, she found herself invited to dinner with the board at The Meat Company at Melrose Arch. They even brought her along to the strategy session at Riverside Spa. Her star had never shone brighter.
One drawback, of course, was that there was no Thando. She had no boyfriend at all – let alone a black one. She’d been to an all-girls high school, the only boy she’d ever been intimate with had been a snow-white, slightly pimply teenager from Stellenbosch. And frankly she was a bit afraid of black men.
But if she was nothing else, Anneline was ambitious, so here she was, cap in hand at the home of her only black friend.
She wanted one thing from Lesego and one thing only: a boyfriend named Thabo.
“Well I do know one Thabo. But he stays in Bryanston. He works at the Absa call centre. I’m not sure he’s single, though.”
“That doesn’t matter. I only need him for one night. We can break up after that. We’ve got the AdMag awards on Wednesday night. I need to show up with a black man named Thabo. It would help if he was stubborn too.”
“He’s not stubborn at all. He’s actually quite nice. I’d be onto him like a shot if I wasn’t already going out with Gift. D’you want me to introduce you?”
“No, I think I’ll just call the call centre.”
And thus it came to pass that Thabo Mnguni had a call patched through to him from a flirtatious white woman who wanted someone to explain how the bank charges on her Absa account were determined.
He gave her the usual breakdown and commiserated with her about the exorbitant rates she was paying. So “considerate” did she find his service, that she hoped he wouldn’t mind if she was so bold as to ask him out.
Thabo didn’t mind. In fact he was flattered. It was encouraging to know that he still had the old charisma. Who said the visually impaired couldn’t be sexy?
“We’re on for Wednesday night,” he said at last, and then by force of habit… “And thank you for banking with Absa.
“Oh no, it’s my pleasure,” said Anneline. “It’s my pleasure.”
And indeed it would be, for Thabo Mnguni was a lover without equal in all of Bryanston. Affirmative dating would never feel so good.
Unexpected detours on the winding trail of dreams
All Dennis wanted was to follow his dreams. But they wouldn’t let him follow his dreams.
He was an employees of Star Security and they simply wouldn’t let him go. And the problem was that he was too good at his job.
The South African security guards at the guard hut of the Via Arrezzio townhouse complex tended to fall asleep after 1am, waking only when impatient residents hooted at the gate. They were also lazy – they seldom left the hut when they were on shift, whereas Dennis was always willing to help old Mrs Friedman with her rubbish bags, or to rake the leaves in the parking lot.
They seemed to take their jobs for granted, where Dennis worked that security guard’s job like it was all that stood between him and oblivion, which is exactly what it was.
Perhaps they knew he didn’t have papers. Maybe the foreman had told them, but whenever it became time to roll the rubbish bins out onto the street for Wednesday morning’s garbage trucks, the other guard would become absorbed in his newspaper and leave Dennis to do it all himself.
And Dennis would bite his tongue and roll out the bins, all 20 of them. Because as long as he rolled out the bins and raked the leaves and stayed awake at his post, he would have a job. And as long as he was earning, he would be able to make the deposits into his mother’s account and the family would survive another month.
The residents of Via Arrezzio saw that the difference in workplace performance between Dennis and the other guards was chalk and cheese. So, pretty soon, the body corporate made him a proposal: why didn’t he resign from Star Security and come and work for the complex as their private security guard?
He and Miriam would get a living quarters behind the swimming pool area, he’d get paid extra for all his maintenance work and, best of all, the money the body corporate paid him would all go into his pocket and not to Star Security.
There was another thing. Dennis and Miriam would be getting married in December. And that would mean going home.
So, in late October, Dennis tendered his resignation in a handwritten note to Mr Reynecke of Star Security. Then they packed their belongings, locked their room in Alexandra and headed north.
Of course, the departure was not the problem. The question was whether they’d be able to come back.
Husband and wife returned to the Beitbridge border post on December 24. After four failed attempts to enter the country by road, they eventually managed to do so by foot.
They abandoned their bags in town and then paid R200 for a guide. They then hiked a few kilometres east down the Limpopo riverbank. Near an overhanging tree, they boarded a boat, in which they were ferried across. The guide then accompanied them to a hole in the fence and gave them directions to Nyundo.
The four-hour hike through the bush to Nyundo was awkward. Dennis and Miriam were city people, with no bush knowledge, and dressed more for a day at the shops than a trek through the dusty thornveld.
They arrived at the Nyundo taxi rank drenched in sweat, their clothes torn in places and famished beyond belief. A bowl of porridge was all they could afford before they handed over the last of their precious savings as taxi fare back to their old life – and the beginnings of Dennis’s new one.
But upon their return to Jo’burg, Dennis learnt that his dream was a while further off than he’d thought.
It had come to light that Via Arrezzio’s original contract with Star Security included an undertaking that they would not poach any of their employees. So if they hired Dennis after inducing him to leave Star, they could be sued.
So Mr Friedman of the body corporate informed Dennis, with regret, that there was no longer a security job for him at Via Arrezzio. They would be sticking with Star for now.
But Mr Reynecke of Star had told him that he would be able to employ him as a gardener without breaking their contract. He’d noticed that Dennis enjoyed raking the leaves and that…
The job didn’t pay much, Friedman conceded, and there’d be no living quarters by the pool, but it was better than being unemployed.
And so Dennis kicked off married life as a gardener.
Elusive things, dreams. Dennis had followed his for 1 000km. Twice. And still they eluded him.
He was an employees of Star Security and they simply wouldn’t let him go. And the problem was that he was too good at his job.
The South African security guards at the guard hut of the Via Arrezzio townhouse complex tended to fall asleep after 1am, waking only when impatient residents hooted at the gate. They were also lazy – they seldom left the hut when they were on shift, whereas Dennis was always willing to help old Mrs Friedman with her rubbish bags, or to rake the leaves in the parking lot.
They seemed to take their jobs for granted, where Dennis worked that security guard’s job like it was all that stood between him and oblivion, which is exactly what it was.
Perhaps they knew he didn’t have papers. Maybe the foreman had told them, but whenever it became time to roll the rubbish bins out onto the street for Wednesday morning’s garbage trucks, the other guard would become absorbed in his newspaper and leave Dennis to do it all himself.
And Dennis would bite his tongue and roll out the bins, all 20 of them. Because as long as he rolled out the bins and raked the leaves and stayed awake at his post, he would have a job. And as long as he was earning, he would be able to make the deposits into his mother’s account and the family would survive another month.
The residents of Via Arrezzio saw that the difference in workplace performance between Dennis and the other guards was chalk and cheese. So, pretty soon, the body corporate made him a proposal: why didn’t he resign from Star Security and come and work for the complex as their private security guard?
He and Miriam would get a living quarters behind the swimming pool area, he’d get paid extra for all his maintenance work and, best of all, the money the body corporate paid him would all go into his pocket and not to Star Security.
There was another thing. Dennis and Miriam would be getting married in December. And that would mean going home.
So, in late October, Dennis tendered his resignation in a handwritten note to Mr Reynecke of Star Security. Then they packed their belongings, locked their room in Alexandra and headed north.
Of course, the departure was not the problem. The question was whether they’d be able to come back.
Husband and wife returned to the Beitbridge border post on December 24. After four failed attempts to enter the country by road, they eventually managed to do so by foot.
They abandoned their bags in town and then paid R200 for a guide. They then hiked a few kilometres east down the Limpopo riverbank. Near an overhanging tree, they boarded a boat, in which they were ferried across. The guide then accompanied them to a hole in the fence and gave them directions to Nyundo.
The four-hour hike through the bush to Nyundo was awkward. Dennis and Miriam were city people, with no bush knowledge, and dressed more for a day at the shops than a trek through the dusty thornveld.
They arrived at the Nyundo taxi rank drenched in sweat, their clothes torn in places and famished beyond belief. A bowl of porridge was all they could afford before they handed over the last of their precious savings as taxi fare back to their old life – and the beginnings of Dennis’s new one.
But upon their return to Jo’burg, Dennis learnt that his dream was a while further off than he’d thought.
It had come to light that Via Arrezzio’s original contract with Star Security included an undertaking that they would not poach any of their employees. So if they hired Dennis after inducing him to leave Star, they could be sued.
So Mr Friedman of the body corporate informed Dennis, with regret, that there was no longer a security job for him at Via Arrezzio. They would be sticking with Star for now.
But Mr Reynecke of Star had told him that he would be able to employ him as a gardener without breaking their contract. He’d noticed that Dennis enjoyed raking the leaves and that…
The job didn’t pay much, Friedman conceded, and there’d be no living quarters by the pool, but it was better than being unemployed.
And so Dennis kicked off married life as a gardener.
Elusive things, dreams. Dennis had followed his for 1 000km. Twice. And still they eluded him.
The night Cliffie went home and never told Jayce
Jason carried a gun for a while back in the Nineties. When it was the fashion.
They’ve gone out of vogue now, but in the days when the clubs were rocking in Rosebank, handguns were huge.
There used to be plastic drums of building sand outside every nightclub so that the owners of firearms could safely unload their weapons without shooting some poor doorman in the foot. Then they’d hand their weapons in to be stored in the gun safe and in return they’d be given a token that they could leave peeking out of their shirt pocket where everybody could see it and know that they were a bad-ass gun owner.
It was ugly days. Rosebank was overrun with cocaine and hijackers and, ay, maybe it made sense to carry a gun.
But not Jason.
That oke should never have been allowed out of the house, let alone armed and dangerous. In those days he was just taking too many drugs for too many nights in a row to be trusted with any kind of weapon.
But some official somewhere clearly wasn’t concentrating the day Jayce came to apply for his gun licence. And we were his mates, we clearly weren’t on top of our game either, because we really should have put our foot down.
The guy could barely string a sentence together, let alone hold down a job. He was living in his mom’s garden flat, he was eating pills like they were Tic-Tacs…
Jayce was a mess. But so were we, so we didn’t spot it until it was a bit too late.
It all came to a head that night at Therapy.
Now to understand Jayce, you must realise that he’s a bit gay. Well, he probably is totally gay. Fact is, I’ve never seen him with a girlfriend.
But Jayce doesn’t know he’s gay. In fact he’s about the biggest homophobe you’ve ever checked. But he still liked to jol at Therapy, which was like the biggest gay club in Rosebank in those days.
In those days we used to hang out with this oke called Cliffie. A skinny little oke who could never handle his dop and used to keep passing out in the oddest places. Jayce was lank protective of the oke. I know, I know. It was all a bit gay.
So the one night we’re all having a fat jol at Therapy – the place is full of gay okes – and Cliffie decides he’s finished jolling so he goes home. But he forgets to tell Jason.
By that stage Jayce is completely shunted on pills and Red Bull and vodkas. And somehow he gets it into his head that Cliffie has passed out and some gay guy has dragged him off to have his way with him.
This is what’s going on in Jayce’s crazy mind. We’re just jolling, completely oblivious.
Next thing we know, Jason has gone and checked his gun out of the gun safe and come charging back into the club. He makes directly for the toilets with his gun drawn like he’s James Bond.
He starts kicking in the doors of the stalls and waving his gun around at the poor okes inside, screaming, “Where’s Cliffie? Where’s Cliffie?”
The three of us come charging in there after him, lank shocked and screaming just as loud, “Cliffie’s gone home! Cliffie’s gone home!”
I saw a couple of terrified dudes cowering in the one cubicle, looking at one another, as if to ask, “Your name’s not Cliffie, is it?”
Jason, was like, “He’s gone home? Oh. Okay.”
Then he put his gun in his pocket and walked out, just as about six bouncers came charging into the toilets looking for him.
So that was it. After that night we banned Jason from owning a gun. We made him hand it over to his mom and the oke was no longer to be seen necking pills with a handgun token peeking out of his shirt pocket.
And almost at the same time, crime began to decrease and those sand drums disappeared from outside the clubs.
People started taking less drugs, or at least they took drugs less openly and things became a lot more relaxed in Jo’burg.
You don’t check okes running around with guns as much as you did back in the Nineties.
Yiss. You used to check some mal stuff back then, hey.
They’ve gone out of vogue now, but in the days when the clubs were rocking in Rosebank, handguns were huge.
There used to be plastic drums of building sand outside every nightclub so that the owners of firearms could safely unload their weapons without shooting some poor doorman in the foot. Then they’d hand their weapons in to be stored in the gun safe and in return they’d be given a token that they could leave peeking out of their shirt pocket where everybody could see it and know that they were a bad-ass gun owner.
It was ugly days. Rosebank was overrun with cocaine and hijackers and, ay, maybe it made sense to carry a gun.
But not Jason.
That oke should never have been allowed out of the house, let alone armed and dangerous. In those days he was just taking too many drugs for too many nights in a row to be trusted with any kind of weapon.
But some official somewhere clearly wasn’t concentrating the day Jayce came to apply for his gun licence. And we were his mates, we clearly weren’t on top of our game either, because we really should have put our foot down.
The guy could barely string a sentence together, let alone hold down a job. He was living in his mom’s garden flat, he was eating pills like they were Tic-Tacs…
Jayce was a mess. But so were we, so we didn’t spot it until it was a bit too late.
It all came to a head that night at Therapy.
Now to understand Jayce, you must realise that he’s a bit gay. Well, he probably is totally gay. Fact is, I’ve never seen him with a girlfriend.
But Jayce doesn’t know he’s gay. In fact he’s about the biggest homophobe you’ve ever checked. But he still liked to jol at Therapy, which was like the biggest gay club in Rosebank in those days.
In those days we used to hang out with this oke called Cliffie. A skinny little oke who could never handle his dop and used to keep passing out in the oddest places. Jayce was lank protective of the oke. I know, I know. It was all a bit gay.
So the one night we’re all having a fat jol at Therapy – the place is full of gay okes – and Cliffie decides he’s finished jolling so he goes home. But he forgets to tell Jason.
By that stage Jayce is completely shunted on pills and Red Bull and vodkas. And somehow he gets it into his head that Cliffie has passed out and some gay guy has dragged him off to have his way with him.
This is what’s going on in Jayce’s crazy mind. We’re just jolling, completely oblivious.
Next thing we know, Jason has gone and checked his gun out of the gun safe and come charging back into the club. He makes directly for the toilets with his gun drawn like he’s James Bond.
He starts kicking in the doors of the stalls and waving his gun around at the poor okes inside, screaming, “Where’s Cliffie? Where’s Cliffie?”
The three of us come charging in there after him, lank shocked and screaming just as loud, “Cliffie’s gone home! Cliffie’s gone home!”
I saw a couple of terrified dudes cowering in the one cubicle, looking at one another, as if to ask, “Your name’s not Cliffie, is it?”
Jason, was like, “He’s gone home? Oh. Okay.”
Then he put his gun in his pocket and walked out, just as about six bouncers came charging into the toilets looking for him.
So that was it. After that night we banned Jason from owning a gun. We made him hand it over to his mom and the oke was no longer to be seen necking pills with a handgun token peeking out of his shirt pocket.
And almost at the same time, crime began to decrease and those sand drums disappeared from outside the clubs.
People started taking less drugs, or at least they took drugs less openly and things became a lot more relaxed in Jo’burg.
You don’t check okes running around with guns as much as you did back in the Nineties.
Yiss. You used to check some mal stuff back then, hey.
Function VIP rooms and how to work them
After five calls I realise he’s checking my name on caller ID and dropping the call, so I borrow someone’s phone and call him on that. Sure enough, he answers on the second ring.
“Hey, Tebogo” I tune him, still a bit out of breath from hitch-hiking. “It’s Lance, china. I’m ya outside the party, man. Come and get me in!”
He makes some kind of grumbling noise, but five minutes later he shows up at the door.
At this party it’s cellphone invites, so I get him to pass his phone over the fence, then I flash it at the door guys and I’m in. No ways I’m gonna miss this one.
They’ve got a fashion show on the go with Pabi Moloi MC’ing, two bars and a buffet. So I go get a couple of plates at the food table. Not bad chow, ay. A Kenyan fish dish, Cape Malay chicken curry, a Ethiopian beef stew kind of thing with a weird name and these long Egyptian meatballs.
Then it’s time to find the VIP section. As I thought, it’s inside the main building. I’ve been to functions at Moyo before.
So I find a guy out of VIP who looks like he’s leaving and ask him if I can get his pass. My girlfriend’s in there, mos.
He hooks me up, so I put the lanyard round my neck and head in there.
It’s all a bit D-list. Mostly guys from MTN.
But then I spot Mike Jack, the oke I met at Hlubi’s birthday, and I go introduce myself. He’s speaking to a guy called Kumaren who’s into video production and events.
The guys are talking about a project of Kumaren’s to bring Missy Elliott down for a gig.
I tell him how her last visit was a flop because she played the wrong venue. How if “my company” was doing it, we would have put her on at the Bassline with, like, three other local acts. I’d probably have gone with Prokid, Brickz and Bongo Maffin.
Kumaren reckons, “You sound like you know what you’re talking about. Do you think you guys could organise something like that at short notice?”
He says he’s only got one gig organised for Missy – some corporate gig on the Thursday. There’s room for one more the next night before she flies back. Do I think I can swing it by next weekend?
I’m on it like a bonnet, chaan. I tune him how I’m old friends with Brad from the Bassline and how I know Mphumi from Ghetto Ruff and all the guys at Gallo, so for sure I can do it. Just, for such short notice, I’d want 15 percent of door. It’s only fair.
He cards me and I promise to get back to him before lunch tomorrow. I tell him I’m out of business cards, but I write my number on a serviette for him. But it doesn’t matter, coz he’s going to be hearing from me first thing anyway.
So then I mingle along, mingle along, all the time scheming how’m I gonna pull this off. Then I spot Brennan, this other oke I met that time we got so caned at Six in Melville after I crashed the advertising awards. I remember he said he played corporate soccer with Brad. So I go up and reintroduce myself.
The oke remembers me a bit. So we chat about football and stuff and I ask him who he’s playing for these days. And Brad?
No, Brad’s not playing any more since he had the lightie. So I reckon, ay I must congratulate him. Has he got Brad’s number for me. My phone got stolen and I lost it.
So I now I got Brad’s number.
Mingle along, Mingle along…
When I get away from Brennan I phone him up and make my pitch, sort of in a different accent: “Hi Brad. This is Kumaran er… Kumaran Pillay of Turbo Events. I’m bringing Missy Elliott out this week and I’ve got a proposal for you…”
He sounds interested, so I tell him how I’d rather he dealt with the promoter who’s putting the whole thing together. A guy called Lance.
He can call him at the following number…
Then I quickly run to the bogs, where the background noise will be a little different. Brad phones just as I get there. Like a little champie I set up a meeting for tomorrow. Styling, chaan!
‘Nother successful night out! Now I just need to find Tebogo and try organise us a lift home.
I wonder what I should call my company. How does Lancet Promotions sound? I scheme that’s a kief name.
“Hey, Tebogo” I tune him, still a bit out of breath from hitch-hiking. “It’s Lance, china. I’m ya outside the party, man. Come and get me in!”
He makes some kind of grumbling noise, but five minutes later he shows up at the door.
At this party it’s cellphone invites, so I get him to pass his phone over the fence, then I flash it at the door guys and I’m in. No ways I’m gonna miss this one.
They’ve got a fashion show on the go with Pabi Moloi MC’ing, two bars and a buffet. So I go get a couple of plates at the food table. Not bad chow, ay. A Kenyan fish dish, Cape Malay chicken curry, a Ethiopian beef stew kind of thing with a weird name and these long Egyptian meatballs.
Then it’s time to find the VIP section. As I thought, it’s inside the main building. I’ve been to functions at Moyo before.
So I find a guy out of VIP who looks like he’s leaving and ask him if I can get his pass. My girlfriend’s in there, mos.
He hooks me up, so I put the lanyard round my neck and head in there.
It’s all a bit D-list. Mostly guys from MTN.
But then I spot Mike Jack, the oke I met at Hlubi’s birthday, and I go introduce myself. He’s speaking to a guy called Kumaren who’s into video production and events.
The guys are talking about a project of Kumaren’s to bring Missy Elliott down for a gig.
I tell him how her last visit was a flop because she played the wrong venue. How if “my company” was doing it, we would have put her on at the Bassline with, like, three other local acts. I’d probably have gone with Prokid, Brickz and Bongo Maffin.
Kumaren reckons, “You sound like you know what you’re talking about. Do you think you guys could organise something like that at short notice?”
He says he’s only got one gig organised for Missy – some corporate gig on the Thursday. There’s room for one more the next night before she flies back. Do I think I can swing it by next weekend?
I’m on it like a bonnet, chaan. I tune him how I’m old friends with Brad from the Bassline and how I know Mphumi from Ghetto Ruff and all the guys at Gallo, so for sure I can do it. Just, for such short notice, I’d want 15 percent of door. It’s only fair.
He cards me and I promise to get back to him before lunch tomorrow. I tell him I’m out of business cards, but I write my number on a serviette for him. But it doesn’t matter, coz he’s going to be hearing from me first thing anyway.
So then I mingle along, mingle along, all the time scheming how’m I gonna pull this off. Then I spot Brennan, this other oke I met that time we got so caned at Six in Melville after I crashed the advertising awards. I remember he said he played corporate soccer with Brad. So I go up and reintroduce myself.
The oke remembers me a bit. So we chat about football and stuff and I ask him who he’s playing for these days. And Brad?
No, Brad’s not playing any more since he had the lightie. So I reckon, ay I must congratulate him. Has he got Brad’s number for me. My phone got stolen and I lost it.
So I now I got Brad’s number.
Mingle along, Mingle along…
When I get away from Brennan I phone him up and make my pitch, sort of in a different accent: “Hi Brad. This is Kumaran er… Kumaran Pillay of Turbo Events. I’m bringing Missy Elliott out this week and I’ve got a proposal for you…”
He sounds interested, so I tell him how I’d rather he dealt with the promoter who’s putting the whole thing together. A guy called Lance.
He can call him at the following number…
Then I quickly run to the bogs, where the background noise will be a little different. Brad phones just as I get there. Like a little champie I set up a meeting for tomorrow. Styling, chaan!
‘Nother successful night out! Now I just need to find Tebogo and try organise us a lift home.
I wonder what I should call my company. How does Lancet Promotions sound? I scheme that’s a kief name.
One last pilgrimage for the reborn surfers
His surfing companions were the same ones they’d been ten years earlier. Their destination was the same, indeed, it looked exactly the same too. What didn’t look the same was the three of them.
A couple of hairlines had been heading west for a couple of years, a couple of recalcitrant waistlines had been refusing all attempts at trimming and a couple of complexions were as pale as PVA after too many weekends spent chasing deadlines.
But none of them were going to call their mates on that. There was a kind of mutually assured embarrassment that kept them from pointing out the obvious. In fact, most of the critical comments were at their own expense.
“Ja, I’m getting a bit of a boep, hey…”
But otherwise, everything was the same. Three mates going surfing at Sardinia Bay they same way they’d done in 1996 or so. Same leisurely cruise down the Seaview road, same parked-up Sardinia Bay lot. Same Wurstwagen offering the same crisp, juicy käsegrillers at basically the same prices.
And the same surf.
Crumbly cross-shore one-footers flopping onto the outside sandbank and then fading out almost immediately before re-forming briefly and crashing onto the beach near the rocks on the lifesaving club side of the beach.
“We can surf that little left-hand re-form,” he said eventually, after they’d been staring mutely at the mush for a couple of minutes. One of his companions couldn’t help wondering under his breath, “What re-form?”
But the left re-form it was to be. The three reborn surfers returned to the car, unveiled their flaccid physiques, freed their receding hairlines from the trucker caps they’d lately taken to wearing and engaged their stiff, absent-minded muscles in the process of suiting up.
They stuck their borrowed surfboards under their freckled arms and locked the car. Then they started realising things were not quite the same.
In 1996, they would have stashed the car keys in the right-front wheel hub. In 1996 the car might’ve been broken into. In 1996 they weren’t driving a brand-new sports sedan.
So what were surfers doing with their keys when they went surfing in 2006? Secreting them in their wetsuits? Perhaps, but of course, there weren’t car guards at Sardinia Bay in 1996 either.
He decided to stick the keys in the wheelhub, same as always, but compromised a little. He hid them in the right rear wheel this time.
They strolled to the water’s edge and the beach looked smaller than he remembered it. He’d caught his first wave here in the Seventies, on a polystyrene boogie board from the Pick ‘n Pay Hypermarket.
He’d been to lank 21sts at the lifesavers’ club, and the one matric after-party. Just before he went overseas, he had his farewell braai here, just a bit around the corner on the rocks.
He’d brought his one girlfriend here the one time, on their first date. And Sardinia Bay had seemed vast with possibility that afternoon, back in the mid-Nineties. Now it seemed small, like the passages of your primary school when you go back to visit.
The memories seemed so much bigger than the reality.
At the water’s edge he loosened his leash from where it was coiled around the fins of the dusty vintage Liquid Art he’d salvaged from his mate Cliffie’s garage. He made a cursory attempt at a stretch routine, found it was more painful than it was worth and entered the water with no further ado.
By the time he’d waded waist-deep into the water, he was already practically at the line-up. He cast a glance up the beach to the island of offshore rocks he’d swum out to once with Cliff during the holidays between standard five and six.
There were kiteboarders out there. Two of them, projecting five, six metres high off the faces of the knee-high waves, then turning and racing back towards the beach for more.
He’d been meaning to try kiteboarding, just… never got into it, as they say. Now he was pushing forty, living in Jo’burg and it didn’t look he’d be learning to kite-surf any time soon.
But he was out the back at Sardinia Bay on a sunny day in the middle of summer, having a laugh and a couple of waves with his two best chinas. Just like the old days. He didn’t need six-metre aerials for this to be a fun day at the beach.
It made him feel a bit older. But cool with it.
A couple of hairlines had been heading west for a couple of years, a couple of recalcitrant waistlines had been refusing all attempts at trimming and a couple of complexions were as pale as PVA after too many weekends spent chasing deadlines.
But none of them were going to call their mates on that. There was a kind of mutually assured embarrassment that kept them from pointing out the obvious. In fact, most of the critical comments were at their own expense.
“Ja, I’m getting a bit of a boep, hey…”
But otherwise, everything was the same. Three mates going surfing at Sardinia Bay they same way they’d done in 1996 or so. Same leisurely cruise down the Seaview road, same parked-up Sardinia Bay lot. Same Wurstwagen offering the same crisp, juicy käsegrillers at basically the same prices.
And the same surf.
Crumbly cross-shore one-footers flopping onto the outside sandbank and then fading out almost immediately before re-forming briefly and crashing onto the beach near the rocks on the lifesaving club side of the beach.
“We can surf that little left-hand re-form,” he said eventually, after they’d been staring mutely at the mush for a couple of minutes. One of his companions couldn’t help wondering under his breath, “What re-form?”
But the left re-form it was to be. The three reborn surfers returned to the car, unveiled their flaccid physiques, freed their receding hairlines from the trucker caps they’d lately taken to wearing and engaged their stiff, absent-minded muscles in the process of suiting up.
They stuck their borrowed surfboards under their freckled arms and locked the car. Then they started realising things were not quite the same.
In 1996, they would have stashed the car keys in the right-front wheel hub. In 1996 the car might’ve been broken into. In 1996 they weren’t driving a brand-new sports sedan.
So what were surfers doing with their keys when they went surfing in 2006? Secreting them in their wetsuits? Perhaps, but of course, there weren’t car guards at Sardinia Bay in 1996 either.
He decided to stick the keys in the wheelhub, same as always, but compromised a little. He hid them in the right rear wheel this time.
They strolled to the water’s edge and the beach looked smaller than he remembered it. He’d caught his first wave here in the Seventies, on a polystyrene boogie board from the Pick ‘n Pay Hypermarket.
He’d been to lank 21sts at the lifesavers’ club, and the one matric after-party. Just before he went overseas, he had his farewell braai here, just a bit around the corner on the rocks.
He’d brought his one girlfriend here the one time, on their first date. And Sardinia Bay had seemed vast with possibility that afternoon, back in the mid-Nineties. Now it seemed small, like the passages of your primary school when you go back to visit.
The memories seemed so much bigger than the reality.
At the water’s edge he loosened his leash from where it was coiled around the fins of the dusty vintage Liquid Art he’d salvaged from his mate Cliffie’s garage. He made a cursory attempt at a stretch routine, found it was more painful than it was worth and entered the water with no further ado.
By the time he’d waded waist-deep into the water, he was already practically at the line-up. He cast a glance up the beach to the island of offshore rocks he’d swum out to once with Cliff during the holidays between standard five and six.
There were kiteboarders out there. Two of them, projecting five, six metres high off the faces of the knee-high waves, then turning and racing back towards the beach for more.
He’d been meaning to try kiteboarding, just… never got into it, as they say. Now he was pushing forty, living in Jo’burg and it didn’t look he’d be learning to kite-surf any time soon.
But he was out the back at Sardinia Bay on a sunny day in the middle of summer, having a laugh and a couple of waves with his two best chinas. Just like the old days. He didn’t need six-metre aerials for this to be a fun day at the beach.
It made him feel a bit older. But cool with it.
The beautiful game and all she does for us
The Portuguese were the worst. Frantic, hyper and oozing machismo, they presented the most difficult proposition of all the ethnic combinations a team was likely to face in the Supersport corporate soccer league.
They weren’t the best team. This season that would be Hollard – a team of mostly coloured guys, for some reason. The hip, dreadlocked black guys of YFM were pretty good too, but they tended to err on the side of midfield wizardry at the expense of goal-scoring.
But those Porras were hardcore. Lusito, they called themselves. Lusito FC. Just about every Lusito game there was a fight. The one game even had to be suspended while players chased each other into the parking lot, tuning each other poes and waving their fists.
They were talented footballers too. They played a direct, passing game, and their wings were 22, aggro and fast as blazes. Their goalie was this bald, fat oke, who liked to try scare you off the ball by screaming his head off at you.
Compared to them, Louis’s team were a bunch of pansies. Incompetent pansies, even if they went by a seemingly auspicious name. The Sandton Personal Training Gym seven-a-side team had lost all six of their games this season.
And this Monday was Sandton PTG’s game against Lusito. It was sure to be a massacre, but that didn’t bother Louis.
What did bother him was that he’d somehow ended up inviting the woman he’d been perving for years to come and watch the massacre.
He’d been making furtive eye contact with soap star Gillian Bogle ever since he’d started using the gym. Last weekend, she’d arrived with a brand-new haircut, in a new outfit and suddenly started a conversation with him.
This after two years of not a word passing between them. It was as if she’d suddenly decided to get to know him. Like she needed a new circle of friends. Maybe she’d embarrassed herself in front of her previous group of mates.
Anyway, he’d gone to gym in his soccer shirt, and she’d asked whether he played. He said sure, Monday nights. She said she’d like to come watch and he’d said well why not come along next week.
And so it was sealed.
Gillian showed up 15 minutes before kickoff at 6pm, in her PTG T-shirt and a pair of tight, black leggings. Every inch the seven-a-side cheerleader.
The problem was that Louis was not only guaranteed to lose, he was also by far the most timid member of the PTG team.
But fate has an odd way of turning our apparent handicaps in our favour.
For instance, on Monday night, late in the second half, with PTG trailing 6-0, a curious thing happened.
Coming on to substitute for Butch, Louis found himself in the unaccustomed position of striker for this first time in his life.
There being no offside rule in seven-a-side, and with Louis loitering hopefully near the Lusito goal, he soon found himself on the end of a high, bouncing kick upfield.
Louis ended up in a goalmouth scrap with the Lusito goalie, who predictably tried his usual tactic of bellowing like a castrated ox.
Louis instinctively cowered, lost his footing and fell flat on his bum. But in doing so, he managed to inadvertently nudge the ball past the keeper with his left knee.
It was the final goal of the match.
As PTG trotted back to where their bags were behind the goals on the McDonalds side of the field, Gillian planted a tender kiss of congratulations on Louis’s nose.
She even joined the team for post-game drinks.
Butch didn’t come, though. Him and Gillian have a history.
For the rest of the season, Gillian religiously attended the gym team’s football games, and even witnessed their narrow 3-2 loss to Hollard.
She attended the PTG end-of-year dinner at Su-Da-Da on Louis’s arm and everybody had a whale of a time.
It’s not like Gillian and Louis ever became romantically involved. Things soon cooled between them, and they ended up little more than email friends.
But they shared a few weeks of fun evenings on the football fields at Sandown High – there across road from McDonalds. And Louis got to meet the lady he’d been admiring from afar for years.
And football provided the pretext for their first meeting. That’s the good thing about football. It brings people together.
They weren’t the best team. This season that would be Hollard – a team of mostly coloured guys, for some reason. The hip, dreadlocked black guys of YFM were pretty good too, but they tended to err on the side of midfield wizardry at the expense of goal-scoring.
But those Porras were hardcore. Lusito, they called themselves. Lusito FC. Just about every Lusito game there was a fight. The one game even had to be suspended while players chased each other into the parking lot, tuning each other poes and waving their fists.
They were talented footballers too. They played a direct, passing game, and their wings were 22, aggro and fast as blazes. Their goalie was this bald, fat oke, who liked to try scare you off the ball by screaming his head off at you.
Compared to them, Louis’s team were a bunch of pansies. Incompetent pansies, even if they went by a seemingly auspicious name. The Sandton Personal Training Gym seven-a-side team had lost all six of their games this season.
And this Monday was Sandton PTG’s game against Lusito. It was sure to be a massacre, but that didn’t bother Louis.
What did bother him was that he’d somehow ended up inviting the woman he’d been perving for years to come and watch the massacre.
He’d been making furtive eye contact with soap star Gillian Bogle ever since he’d started using the gym. Last weekend, she’d arrived with a brand-new haircut, in a new outfit and suddenly started a conversation with him.
This after two years of not a word passing between them. It was as if she’d suddenly decided to get to know him. Like she needed a new circle of friends. Maybe she’d embarrassed herself in front of her previous group of mates.
Anyway, he’d gone to gym in his soccer shirt, and she’d asked whether he played. He said sure, Monday nights. She said she’d like to come watch and he’d said well why not come along next week.
And so it was sealed.
Gillian showed up 15 minutes before kickoff at 6pm, in her PTG T-shirt and a pair of tight, black leggings. Every inch the seven-a-side cheerleader.
The problem was that Louis was not only guaranteed to lose, he was also by far the most timid member of the PTG team.
But fate has an odd way of turning our apparent handicaps in our favour.
For instance, on Monday night, late in the second half, with PTG trailing 6-0, a curious thing happened.
Coming on to substitute for Butch, Louis found himself in the unaccustomed position of striker for this first time in his life.
There being no offside rule in seven-a-side, and with Louis loitering hopefully near the Lusito goal, he soon found himself on the end of a high, bouncing kick upfield.
Louis ended up in a goalmouth scrap with the Lusito goalie, who predictably tried his usual tactic of bellowing like a castrated ox.
Louis instinctively cowered, lost his footing and fell flat on his bum. But in doing so, he managed to inadvertently nudge the ball past the keeper with his left knee.
It was the final goal of the match.
As PTG trotted back to where their bags were behind the goals on the McDonalds side of the field, Gillian planted a tender kiss of congratulations on Louis’s nose.
She even joined the team for post-game drinks.
Butch didn’t come, though. Him and Gillian have a history.
For the rest of the season, Gillian religiously attended the gym team’s football games, and even witnessed their narrow 3-2 loss to Hollard.
She attended the PTG end-of-year dinner at Su-Da-Da on Louis’s arm and everybody had a whale of a time.
It’s not like Gillian and Louis ever became romantically involved. Things soon cooled between them, and they ended up little more than email friends.
But they shared a few weeks of fun evenings on the football fields at Sandown High – there across road from McDonalds. And Louis got to meet the lady he’d been admiring from afar for years.
And football provided the pretext for their first meeting. That’s the good thing about football. It brings people together.
The tragic case of the comedy debut
At this point, Gillian Bogle’s biggest handicap was that she was Gillian Bogle.
All the other comics and wannabe comics had been indulged with good-natured chuckles and unwarranted laughs as they gamely paraded their by turns weak, inappropriate and unpolished material.
The one Indian lady had somehow managed to get away with a joke that rode on the premise of a barman mishearing the name Hansa. The punchline was, “How can I give you a Hansa when I don’t even know the question yet?”
Admittedly there were islands of quality amid the dross.
Comedy prodigy David Kabuka from Uganda had this killer riff about black defiance.
“If you want to get black people to do something, your best approach would be to ban them from doing it. Dude, they’ll be toyi-toyi-ing in the streets about it: ‘Kitesurfing! Viva kitesurfing! We demand the right to go kitesurfing!’”
And he also had this line about what he says when locals speak to him in Sotho and he has no idea what they’re saying: “Sho-sho. Sho-sho!”
Kibuka was just a newcomer giving it a go and everybody was on his side. He had them in the palm of his hand from the minute he walked on with his scruffy pants blazer and his shy grin.
But how would they take to a notorious soap celebrity who now thought she could do comedy? What if they simply didn’t like her character on the series? There could be no better way of getting your revenge than going to someone’s comedy debut and simply not laughing.
On Sunday nights at the Comedy Underground, the novices are given five-minute slots before the break, and the bigger names, the comedy heavyweights, come on after the break. Gillian was opening the second half, before Chris Forrest, John Vlismas and Martin Jonas, the king of Johannesburg comedy.
It was a bit like playing your first gig at open-mic night at the folk club and coming on before Steve Hofmeyr, Koos Kombuis and Arno Carstens.
And as one does when you find yourself on the business end of such an imposing line-up, Gillian hit the bar. Hard. Two tequilas were down before she’d even got her wallet out of her purse. These were followed by a glass of wine that dived down her gullet like a bucket down a well.
She was feeling a lot more confident by the time she took the stage, clutching her second glass and puffing on the first cigarette she’d had since varsity.
It wasn’t quite the comic persona she’d been planning to project, but there you go. These were desperate times.
Where her soap opera character was a control-freak bitch, Comedy Gillian ended up coming across as a wild-eyed, foul-mouthed, female Eddie Murphy.
She’d chosen rather hardcore material to begin with, and the booze only hardened her attitude.
Gillian opened with joke that made fun of white people. And it was downhill from there. She should have felt the mixed student audience’s discomfort with racial material, but she’d had four drinks. She wasn’t quite in touch…
She’d recently had her hair corn-rowed for a celebrity boxing match, and she used the opportunity to gently mock the amount black people spent on haircare.
It went down like a bomb threat.
Then she started saying something about TK, the late R&B singer. She didn’t even manage to get to the punchline before she was drowned out in a chorus of unimpressed murmurs.
Eventually she got the hint, and lurched onto an awkward story about going shopping with her boyfriend. It was supposed to be a bit of observational comedy about the green-eyed monster of jealousy that rears its head every time her boyfriend looks at another girl at the mall.
But she never got there. The murmurs became a roar of disapproval and then a slow handclap and some whistles. They were hating her.
Gillian felt panic set in. She went blank. She had a sip of wine to buy some time, but there were no more jokes forthcoming.
“Do you want me to go?” she asked, and it won the biggest round of applause of the evening.
That night she went home and finished another bottle of wine in her flat, all on her own.
Then she crawled into her room and cried and cried and cried. Until she fell sleep.
At that point, Gillian Bogle’s biggest handicap was that she was Gillian Bogle.
All the other comics and wannabe comics had been indulged with good-natured chuckles and unwarranted laughs as they gamely paraded their by turns weak, inappropriate and unpolished material.
The one Indian lady had somehow managed to get away with a joke that rode on the premise of a barman mishearing the name Hansa. The punchline was, “How can I give you a Hansa when I don’t even know the question yet?”
Admittedly there were islands of quality amid the dross.
Comedy prodigy David Kabuka from Uganda had this killer riff about black defiance.
“If you want to get black people to do something, your best approach would be to ban them from doing it. Dude, they’ll be toyi-toyi-ing in the streets about it: ‘Kitesurfing! Viva kitesurfing! We demand the right to go kitesurfing!’”
And he also had this line about what he says when locals speak to him in Sotho and he has no idea what they’re saying: “Sho-sho. Sho-sho!”
Kibuka was just a newcomer giving it a go and everybody was on his side. He had them in the palm of his hand from the minute he walked on with his scruffy pants blazer and his shy grin.
But how would they take to a notorious soap celebrity who now thought she could do comedy? What if they simply didn’t like her character on the series? There could be no better way of getting your revenge than going to someone’s comedy debut and simply not laughing.
On Sunday nights at the Comedy Underground, the novices are given five-minute slots before the break, and the bigger names, the comedy heavyweights, come on after the break. Gillian was opening the second half, before Chris Forrest, John Vlismas and Martin Jonas, the king of Johannesburg comedy.
It was a bit like playing your first gig at open-mic night at the folk club and coming on before Steve Hofmeyr, Koos Kombuis and Arno Carstens.
And as one does when you find yourself on the business end of such an imposing line-up, Gillian hit the bar. Hard. Two tequilas were down before she’d even got her wallet out of her purse. These were followed by a glass of wine that dived down her gullet like a bucket down a well.
She was feeling a lot more confident by the time she took the stage, clutching her second glass and puffing on the first cigarette she’d had since varsity.
It wasn’t quite the comic persona she’d been planning to project, but there you go. These were desperate times.
Where her soap opera character was a control-freak bitch, Comedy Gillian ended up coming across as a wild-eyed, foul-mouthed, female Eddie Murphy.
She’d chosen rather hardcore material to begin with, and the booze only hardened her attitude.
Gillian opened with joke that made fun of white people. And it was downhill from there. She should have felt the mixed student audience’s discomfort with racial material, but she’d had four drinks. She wasn’t quite in touch…
She’d recently had her hair corn-rowed for a celebrity boxing match, and she used the opportunity to gently mock the amount black people spent on haircare.
It went down like a bomb threat.
Then she started saying something about TK, the late R&B singer. She didn’t even manage to get to the punchline before she was drowned out in a chorus of unimpressed murmurs.
Eventually she got the hint, and lurched onto an awkward story about going shopping with her boyfriend. It was supposed to be a bit of observational comedy about the green-eyed monster of jealousy that rears its head every time her boyfriend looks at another girl at the mall.
But she never got there. The murmurs became a roar of disapproval and then a slow handclap and some whistles. They were hating her.
Gillian felt panic set in. She went blank. She had a sip of wine to buy some time, but there were no more jokes forthcoming.
“Do you want me to go?” she asked, and it won the biggest round of applause of the evening.
That night she went home and finished another bottle of wine in her flat, all on her own.
Then she crawled into her room and cried and cried and cried. Until she fell sleep.
At that point, Gillian Bogle’s biggest handicap was that she was Gillian Bogle.
Sunburnt and gatvol in the forest of legs
Twelve years I been waiting!
Hey? Since that time in Craig’s room, when he was staying in that pozzie just off the garage.
Played me Ride The Lighting, Master Of Puppets and …And Justice For All in one sitting. That was metal, bru.
The Black Album was lame compared to all that.
Lame, lame, lame.
No bru, Battery is the tune. “Smashing through the boundaries, lunacy has found me. Cannot stop the ba-ter-ry! Battery!”
That’s when I worked out why all those okes had put Metallica logos on their satchels at school.
Started growing my hair that same night. Didn’t cut it for four years – till it started going bald on the sides, then went for a bit of a fringe. Like a mullet-y thing.
Taped all the okes’ albums that night as well. Lank hard to get in those days. Had to tape them. Kill ‘Em All on one side and then Garage Days on the other. Like that.
Bought the albums after that. Bought Load. Bought Reload. Bought St Anger. Bought the Binge And Purge live box set. Learnt all the words to all the songs. Even bought the Some Kind Of Monster DVD with bonus disc.
So I make out the whole story. Started in San Francisco with Cliff Burton on bass. Then Cliff got killed in a bus crash while they were touring Europe. Jason Newsted came and jolled. That’s when Craig went and checked them at Donington.
The ou caught one of James’s picks when he threw it into the pit. Still framed the thing and put it up in his room when he came back. Oke wouldn’t shut up about it for years.
Wore that Donington concert shirt till it went grey.
Meanwhile I never got to check them.
Till now.
Now I spent my R550, spent my two hours in the traffic jam and I’m in the bladdy stadium ready to check fuckin’ Metallica after 12 years. Twelve years, bru!
In my St Anger shirt, frying like a chip in the middle of Supersport Park. Yiss it’s hot.
You can’t get a wettie for any money and the babe’s not digging it less. I queue for two hours for four beers. Then they close the bar.
I manage to get us a couple of melting King Cones and a bag of peanuts at about two o’clock. ‘Tallica’s only on at 10pm. S’gonna be a long day.
We stand for three hours, through Carstens, Prime Circle, Simple Plan and The Rasmus.
We should have drank some water before we came. The fuckers wouldn’t even have let us bring any in.
Start feeling a bit faint during Roger Goode on the electronica stage, so I have a lie-down on the grass bank. Getting dark, but it’s still four hours to Metallica. The babe goes to find me some water, comes back with half of some oke’s Fanta.
The sugar gets me up again and I make it back to the rock stage, just in time for Seether’s set. They got too many bands playing at this thing. Too many bands to get through.
Seether rocks, but we just stand and watch. Wanna save a bit of energy for the main gig. Haven’t chowed in ages now, and there’s no sign of the food vendors any more.
They disappeared when ous started abusing them for running out of stock.
Yiss, I’m skraal, hey. Stomach’s growling, hey. And there’s no place to sit. It’s just so full.
Now it’s still Collective Soul for a hour. Seem to recognise lank of their songs.
Sunburnt, hey. Feeling a bit flushed.
If I faint now, bru. If I faint now…
Twelve years. I waited twelve years for this.
My legs give out a little and the babe asks if I’m okay.
I scheme I just gotta sit down for a bit. Park off on my haunches in the forest of legs.
Can hear Collective Soul jol ten songs that sound exactly the same. Then there’s a power failure during their last song. They have to start over again. And then there’s gonna be half an hour changeover between bands.
I stand up for a bit and try have a little trap around to get the blood flowing. Everyone else is just standing there, sunburnt and gatvol staring at the stage, scheming, “Come on. Play. It’s been years.”
I sit down between the girlfriend’s legs and have a little kip sitting up. Tune her, “Just kick me when it starts.”
Hey? Since that time in Craig’s room, when he was staying in that pozzie just off the garage.
Played me Ride The Lighting, Master Of Puppets and …And Justice For All in one sitting. That was metal, bru.
The Black Album was lame compared to all that.
Lame, lame, lame.
No bru, Battery is the tune. “Smashing through the boundaries, lunacy has found me. Cannot stop the ba-ter-ry! Battery!”
That’s when I worked out why all those okes had put Metallica logos on their satchels at school.
Started growing my hair that same night. Didn’t cut it for four years – till it started going bald on the sides, then went for a bit of a fringe. Like a mullet-y thing.
Taped all the okes’ albums that night as well. Lank hard to get in those days. Had to tape them. Kill ‘Em All on one side and then Garage Days on the other. Like that.
Bought the albums after that. Bought Load. Bought Reload. Bought St Anger. Bought the Binge And Purge live box set. Learnt all the words to all the songs. Even bought the Some Kind Of Monster DVD with bonus disc.
So I make out the whole story. Started in San Francisco with Cliff Burton on bass. Then Cliff got killed in a bus crash while they were touring Europe. Jason Newsted came and jolled. That’s when Craig went and checked them at Donington.
The ou caught one of James’s picks when he threw it into the pit. Still framed the thing and put it up in his room when he came back. Oke wouldn’t shut up about it for years.
Wore that Donington concert shirt till it went grey.
Meanwhile I never got to check them.
Till now.
Now I spent my R550, spent my two hours in the traffic jam and I’m in the bladdy stadium ready to check fuckin’ Metallica after 12 years. Twelve years, bru!
In my St Anger shirt, frying like a chip in the middle of Supersport Park. Yiss it’s hot.
You can’t get a wettie for any money and the babe’s not digging it less. I queue for two hours for four beers. Then they close the bar.
I manage to get us a couple of melting King Cones and a bag of peanuts at about two o’clock. ‘Tallica’s only on at 10pm. S’gonna be a long day.
We stand for three hours, through Carstens, Prime Circle, Simple Plan and The Rasmus.
We should have drank some water before we came. The fuckers wouldn’t even have let us bring any in.
Start feeling a bit faint during Roger Goode on the electronica stage, so I have a lie-down on the grass bank. Getting dark, but it’s still four hours to Metallica. The babe goes to find me some water, comes back with half of some oke’s Fanta.
The sugar gets me up again and I make it back to the rock stage, just in time for Seether’s set. They got too many bands playing at this thing. Too many bands to get through.
Seether rocks, but we just stand and watch. Wanna save a bit of energy for the main gig. Haven’t chowed in ages now, and there’s no sign of the food vendors any more.
They disappeared when ous started abusing them for running out of stock.
Yiss, I’m skraal, hey. Stomach’s growling, hey. And there’s no place to sit. It’s just so full.
Now it’s still Collective Soul for a hour. Seem to recognise lank of their songs.
Sunburnt, hey. Feeling a bit flushed.
If I faint now, bru. If I faint now…
Twelve years. I waited twelve years for this.
My legs give out a little and the babe asks if I’m okay.
I scheme I just gotta sit down for a bit. Park off on my haunches in the forest of legs.
Can hear Collective Soul jol ten songs that sound exactly the same. Then there’s a power failure during their last song. They have to start over again. And then there’s gonna be half an hour changeover between bands.
I stand up for a bit and try have a little trap around to get the blood flowing. Everyone else is just standing there, sunburnt and gatvol staring at the stage, scheming, “Come on. Play. It’s been years.”
I sit down between the girlfriend’s legs and have a little kip sitting up. Tune her, “Just kick me when it starts.”
You never know when you’ve reached the summit
Peanut had earned his nickname the day he stripped for his first communal shower in boarding school.
But those days were behind him. Tonight he was David Hastings Bouwer. That was his given name, which had been entered in the charge book upon his admission to the Brixton police station holding cells.
Like a fool he’d had his wallet in his jeans and his pseudonym of David Gilmore had been found out for what it was.
That’s the thing with streaking. You have to leave your clothes somewhere before embarking on the actual streak. So any authority figure – like the Campus Square Mall security guard – has to simply wait by your clothes in order to apprehend you.
And unfortunately Peanut’s security guard had gone the whole hog and called the bladdy police on him. For streaking! At 1am through a deserted shopping mall! For fuck’s sake.
Such injustice.
So now, here he was. Topless in his jeans in the Brixton holding cells, holding forth.
“Do you know who my father is? Do you have any idea who my father is? Have you heard of Willie Bouwer? He’s the dean of the University of Johannesburg. He knows everybody in the cops. Hey you! Mr policeman. What’s your name? Lemme see your badge. You! Radebe! My dad knows your boss! My dad will have you fired for this. He’s the dean of the varsity. Hey you! Come back here!”
At the time of this outburst, Peanut was 20 years old and poised – topless – at the cusp of his life.
Psychologists have confirmed that the speed at which humans perceive time passing accelerates as we age. These scientists have even been able to identify the exact rate of this acceleration. They have determined that if a person lives to be 80, according to their perception of time, 20 will be the midpoint of their life.
So, at exactly 20 years, four months and three days of age, David Hastings Bouwer, aka Peanut, aka David Gilmore, stands astride the peak of the mountain that comprises his experience on earth.
Without even knowing it, he has summited. Like a runner running a marathon without distance markers, he has passed the 21km mark without noticing.
Peanut’s interminable three years at Happy Campers play school, his endless twelve years at Melville Primary and Roosevelt Park High and this last couple of.. gee, it’s already been a year at varsity. Those years have taken him to the halfway mark of his life. If not beyond.
But of course, Peanut is comfortably oblivious to this.
Still warm from the beer, fearless from the cosy family upbringing and uninhibited from the privilege of being surrounded by friends, he shouts the odds and threatens the charge-office cops with his father’s social connections.
But his father will not get him out of this one. There are limits to even his well-connectedness. So Peanut’s wild, angry night will become a cold uncomfortable weekend. He will notice he is no longer surrounded by friends.
He will appear broken, hungry and pale in court on Monday morning, where he will sit in magistrates court alongside the poor, the unlucky, the devious and the lazy and wait for his case to be remanded.
Friday night will be his last streaking episode. Peanut will meet Megan, his first serious girlfriend, at the post-exam student night at the Roxy. They will be living together in a digs in 7th Avenue by the beginning of next year.
She will be pregnant in a year’s time.
Their daughter will be named Mackenzie.
They will not marry, but Peanut will start calling himself David and take a job as an insurance broker to support his family. Peanut and Megan will part ways in early 2008. He will marry for the first time at the age of 32 and have another two children. A lawyer and a musician.
Megan will stay with her mom and she will later work in sales at a TV station.
David will take up marathon running at the age of 46. To get away from the wife and kids.
He will finish 11 Comrades, eight Two Oceans, three Sunrise Monsters and one Om Die Dam before suffering a heart attack on the road outside Hartbeespoort aged 60.
He will collapse just inside the yellow line, clutching his chest and he will stare up at the blue highveld sky and think to himself, “Time goes by so fast.”
But those days were behind him. Tonight he was David Hastings Bouwer. That was his given name, which had been entered in the charge book upon his admission to the Brixton police station holding cells.
Like a fool he’d had his wallet in his jeans and his pseudonym of David Gilmore had been found out for what it was.
That’s the thing with streaking. You have to leave your clothes somewhere before embarking on the actual streak. So any authority figure – like the Campus Square Mall security guard – has to simply wait by your clothes in order to apprehend you.
And unfortunately Peanut’s security guard had gone the whole hog and called the bladdy police on him. For streaking! At 1am through a deserted shopping mall! For fuck’s sake.
Such injustice.
So now, here he was. Topless in his jeans in the Brixton holding cells, holding forth.
“Do you know who my father is? Do you have any idea who my father is? Have you heard of Willie Bouwer? He’s the dean of the University of Johannesburg. He knows everybody in the cops. Hey you! Mr policeman. What’s your name? Lemme see your badge. You! Radebe! My dad knows your boss! My dad will have you fired for this. He’s the dean of the varsity. Hey you! Come back here!”
At the time of this outburst, Peanut was 20 years old and poised – topless – at the cusp of his life.
Psychologists have confirmed that the speed at which humans perceive time passing accelerates as we age. These scientists have even been able to identify the exact rate of this acceleration. They have determined that if a person lives to be 80, according to their perception of time, 20 will be the midpoint of their life.
So, at exactly 20 years, four months and three days of age, David Hastings Bouwer, aka Peanut, aka David Gilmore, stands astride the peak of the mountain that comprises his experience on earth.
Without even knowing it, he has summited. Like a runner running a marathon without distance markers, he has passed the 21km mark without noticing.
Peanut’s interminable three years at Happy Campers play school, his endless twelve years at Melville Primary and Roosevelt Park High and this last couple of.. gee, it’s already been a year at varsity. Those years have taken him to the halfway mark of his life. If not beyond.
But of course, Peanut is comfortably oblivious to this.
Still warm from the beer, fearless from the cosy family upbringing and uninhibited from the privilege of being surrounded by friends, he shouts the odds and threatens the charge-office cops with his father’s social connections.
But his father will not get him out of this one. There are limits to even his well-connectedness. So Peanut’s wild, angry night will become a cold uncomfortable weekend. He will notice he is no longer surrounded by friends.
He will appear broken, hungry and pale in court on Monday morning, where he will sit in magistrates court alongside the poor, the unlucky, the devious and the lazy and wait for his case to be remanded.
Friday night will be his last streaking episode. Peanut will meet Megan, his first serious girlfriend, at the post-exam student night at the Roxy. They will be living together in a digs in 7th Avenue by the beginning of next year.
She will be pregnant in a year’s time.
Their daughter will be named Mackenzie.
They will not marry, but Peanut will start calling himself David and take a job as an insurance broker to support his family. Peanut and Megan will part ways in early 2008. He will marry for the first time at the age of 32 and have another two children. A lawyer and a musician.
Megan will stay with her mom and she will later work in sales at a TV station.
David will take up marathon running at the age of 46. To get away from the wife and kids.
He will finish 11 Comrades, eight Two Oceans, three Sunrise Monsters and one Om Die Dam before suffering a heart attack on the road outside Hartbeespoort aged 60.
He will collapse just inside the yellow line, clutching his chest and he will stare up at the blue highveld sky and think to himself, “Time goes by so fast.”
Pants, power, and personal fulfilment
Philip could pinpoint the exact moment that it happened. The very instant when he decided he needed to do something radical.
He was standing in the middle of the Fashion TV Café – a place he despised, wearing a garish green shirt Katherine had bought him and holding her luminous pink handbag while she went to find a light.
The place wasn’t packed, so there was enough space for him to have a little clearing to himself beneath the overhead light. There was a pause in the music, and practically everybody started gazing about the venue in search of something to stare at. And of course everyone’s eyes came to rest on the pillock in the green shirt holding his girlfriend’s purse.
Right then, Shane Warne walked past, looked him up and down and suppressed a guffaw.
Jeez. Embarrassing moments don’t get much more embarrassing than that.
And why was he there? Because Katherine wanted to go.
Who was he there with? Katherine and her mates.
Whose luminous pink handbag was he holding? Katherine’s
Just then, Kath came strutting back, ciggie blazing. And Phil flashed on the most heartbreaking part of the whole deal. Katherine was wearing a pair of his leather trousers. She was wearing the trousers!
The metaphor was brutal. Fuck, so brutal it wasn’t even metaphorical.
“Here’s your purse,” he snapped. “Let’s go.”
On the way down to the car, Philip made up his mind. This weekend was me time. This weekend they were doing something he wanted to do. No, change that. This weekend he was doing something he wanted to do.
“Let’s just do our own thing this weekend,” told her assertively. “I’m gonna do something on my own.”
But he hadn’t reckoned on the depth of Katherine’s manipulativeness.
“Ja,” she said. “It’s about time you did some guy stuff. Why don’t you hook up with your mates and go watch the Bulls game at Loftus on Saturday? Then you can go to student night in Hatfield afterwards and then have some lapdances at Teazers. I’ll see you next week.”
The minute she said that, he realised he couldn’t do any of that. If he did, he’d be doing what he was told. And Katherine would still be wearing the trousers.
To really prove his independence, Phil would have to actively do something Katherine didn’t want him to do.
He was so unaccustomed to thinking for himself, that it took a couple of days to work out what that should be, but then it came to him.
He would go and live in the Melville drain.
He took Friday off graft. Then he drove to Melville and parked his car at the Campus Square mall. He got his sleeping bag and a pillow out the boot, then walked down the hill to the drain. He hid his keys in a flowerbed in Fourth Avenue.
He found a pretty decent shelter on the embankment below the Meldene Sports Club. There was foliage, and the overhang from where the fence had started to lean over would keep him dry if it rained.
He hid his sleeping bag there. Then, feeling hungry, he took a stroll to Main street, where was able to find a half-eaten chicken burger in the rubbish bin outside Fontana.
While he was finishing it in the parking lot behind the Meldene Medi-Cross, someone tossed a R5 coin down at his feet. With that five bucks he was able to buy two loose cigarettes and a half-loaf of brown.
When he returned to camp he met Douglas, a neighbour, who allowed him to move in with him under the Barry Hertzog bridge, where he had a fire and a kettle. In exchange Phil gave him one cigarette and they shared the brown, making polony sandwiches and washing it down with water from the tap at the sports club.
The evening was warmer than expected, thanks to Douglas’s kind brazier and some plastic sheets they found in the skip behind the CSIR.
The next day, Douglas introduced him to Lani, who ran the kitchen at the Local Grill. Thanks to her they breakfasted on the remains of three half-finished omelettes.
By Sunday, Philip had procured a trolley from Campus Square and was in business as a cardboard recycler.
On Sunday, around the time Katherine was leaving her third vain voicemail message on Philip’s cellphone, he was sharing a bottle of Crackling with Douglas beneath the Barry Hertzog bridge.
Why? Because he felt like it.
What was he wearing? A pair of leather trousers.
He was standing in the middle of the Fashion TV Café – a place he despised, wearing a garish green shirt Katherine had bought him and holding her luminous pink handbag while she went to find a light.
The place wasn’t packed, so there was enough space for him to have a little clearing to himself beneath the overhead light. There was a pause in the music, and practically everybody started gazing about the venue in search of something to stare at. And of course everyone’s eyes came to rest on the pillock in the green shirt holding his girlfriend’s purse.
Right then, Shane Warne walked past, looked him up and down and suppressed a guffaw.
Jeez. Embarrassing moments don’t get much more embarrassing than that.
And why was he there? Because Katherine wanted to go.
Who was he there with? Katherine and her mates.
Whose luminous pink handbag was he holding? Katherine’s
Just then, Kath came strutting back, ciggie blazing. And Phil flashed on the most heartbreaking part of the whole deal. Katherine was wearing a pair of his leather trousers. She was wearing the trousers!
The metaphor was brutal. Fuck, so brutal it wasn’t even metaphorical.
“Here’s your purse,” he snapped. “Let’s go.”
On the way down to the car, Philip made up his mind. This weekend was me time. This weekend they were doing something he wanted to do. No, change that. This weekend he was doing something he wanted to do.
“Let’s just do our own thing this weekend,” told her assertively. “I’m gonna do something on my own.”
But he hadn’t reckoned on the depth of Katherine’s manipulativeness.
“Ja,” she said. “It’s about time you did some guy stuff. Why don’t you hook up with your mates and go watch the Bulls game at Loftus on Saturday? Then you can go to student night in Hatfield afterwards and then have some lapdances at Teazers. I’ll see you next week.”
The minute she said that, he realised he couldn’t do any of that. If he did, he’d be doing what he was told. And Katherine would still be wearing the trousers.
To really prove his independence, Phil would have to actively do something Katherine didn’t want him to do.
He was so unaccustomed to thinking for himself, that it took a couple of days to work out what that should be, but then it came to him.
He would go and live in the Melville drain.
He took Friday off graft. Then he drove to Melville and parked his car at the Campus Square mall. He got his sleeping bag and a pillow out the boot, then walked down the hill to the drain. He hid his keys in a flowerbed in Fourth Avenue.
He found a pretty decent shelter on the embankment below the Meldene Sports Club. There was foliage, and the overhang from where the fence had started to lean over would keep him dry if it rained.
He hid his sleeping bag there. Then, feeling hungry, he took a stroll to Main street, where was able to find a half-eaten chicken burger in the rubbish bin outside Fontana.
While he was finishing it in the parking lot behind the Meldene Medi-Cross, someone tossed a R5 coin down at his feet. With that five bucks he was able to buy two loose cigarettes and a half-loaf of brown.
When he returned to camp he met Douglas, a neighbour, who allowed him to move in with him under the Barry Hertzog bridge, where he had a fire and a kettle. In exchange Phil gave him one cigarette and they shared the brown, making polony sandwiches and washing it down with water from the tap at the sports club.
The evening was warmer than expected, thanks to Douglas’s kind brazier and some plastic sheets they found in the skip behind the CSIR.
The next day, Douglas introduced him to Lani, who ran the kitchen at the Local Grill. Thanks to her they breakfasted on the remains of three half-finished omelettes.
By Sunday, Philip had procured a trolley from Campus Square and was in business as a cardboard recycler.
On Sunday, around the time Katherine was leaving her third vain voicemail message on Philip’s cellphone, he was sharing a bottle of Crackling with Douglas beneath the Barry Hertzog bridge.
Why? Because he felt like it.
What was he wearing? A pair of leather trousers.
Very precious things, and how to get them
T-Boz was Ntsiki’s favourite DJ by far! She’d been listening to him since 2000 when he was still on Bop. She’d watched him when he was presenting the Saturday chart show on SABC1, and she listened to him every afternoon now that he was doing the afternoon drive show on Jozi FM.
She’d supported him every time he played at Monaco, danced right at the front all night, but still she’d never had a conversation with him. The closest was that time they’d ended up next to each other at the bar at Who Zoo and she’d told him, “Tight set, man.”
He’d said, “Thank you sister. Thanks a lot,” and smiled.
And that was that, after ten yeas of supporting him, that was the closest she’d come to meeting him.
So it was about time.
Here he was, one metre away, browsing vinyls at the Rosebank market. He was with his girlfriend, so Ntsiki hung back, just a step behind them and to the left – just close enough to here what T-Boz was saying to the stallholder.
“What I’m really looking for is one of those old, old record players – those gramophones that play 78s. You now, with the big megaphone on the side?”
“You know, you might be in luck…” was all Ntsiki heard the trader say, because she was out of there before he could finish his sentence. She knew the rest of it anyway: there was an old 78rpm record player barely three aisles over, in the antiques section.
Ntsiki had caught sight of it on her first pass through the market. It had a nice, shiny brass speaker horn on it, that’s how she remembered. But now it meant a lot more to her than a shiny brass horn.
Within seconds she was asking, “How much for the record player?”
“Two thousand,” came the reply.
Gee! For that old thing. Anyway, if that was the price of getting T-Boz’s phone number, then it was well worth it.
“It’s lovely, I’ll take it,” she snapped.
She barely had time to slap her debit card down before T-Boz and his girlfriend were at her elbow.
“No! You not serious!” he gasped. “Don’t tell me you’re buying this. Do you know how long I’ve been looking for one? It must be the last one in Jo’burg!”
It was the first thing he’d ever said to her, really. She was squealing inside, but she managed to keep her composure.
“It’s gorgeous, isn’t it? I’m getting it for my, uh, for my dad. He collects 78s!”
“Really!” T-Boz was impressed! “So do I. What’s he into?”
“Oh, jazz, mostly,” Ntsiki replied matter-of-factly as she nervously eyed the debit-card machine. “Approved” it read, triumphantly.
“I’d love to see his collection!”
He was looking her right in the eye when he said it, with this cute, cute kind of little-boy smile, just begging her to invite him over. Meanwhile his girlfriend was giving her the dirtiest look you could imagine. But T-Boz was in such a record-lover’s trance, he didn’t even notice.
“I tell you what…”
Here Ntsiki paused and put her index finger to her bottom lip, in a way that she knew made her look both cute and intelligent. She’d practised the look many times in her bathroom mirror. Luckily she was wearing her brown wig today, so she gazed up at T-Boz through her fringe, as she said:
“I tell you what. I can see you’re into your music. I’m getting this player as a gift for my dad. I don’t really know what he’s got and what he hasn’t got. So I’ll see if he needs the record player. If he doesn’t, then you can have it. How’s that?”
“Fabulous! I’ll give you my number. Like I say, I’ve been looking for one of these for years. I’m actually a DJ.”
“Oh, ja! Do you play on the radio or in clubs?
“Both, hey. I’m on Jozi FM on drive time and I also play gigs…”
“Oh great! I must listen to your show. Where’s Jozi on the dial?”
Meanwhile she’d had Jozi FM pretuned to setting number one on her car stereo for the past three years.
“It’s 98.1,” said T-Boz. “So anyway, let me give you my number and you can get back to me about this record player. Coz I’m really keen. By the way, this is my girlfriend, Thumeka. I’m sorry, your name is…”
“I’m Ntsiki…”
And all three of them shook hands.
Ntsiki fielded another foul glare from Thumeka but it fairly bounced off her, she was so happy. And she floated out of the Rosebank market with the enormous record player as if it was lighter than air.
The clunky old thing meant nothing to her now. It was just a means to an end. However, on the contacts list of her cellphone nestled the most precious thing she’d ever had.
She’d supported him every time he played at Monaco, danced right at the front all night, but still she’d never had a conversation with him. The closest was that time they’d ended up next to each other at the bar at Who Zoo and she’d told him, “Tight set, man.”
He’d said, “Thank you sister. Thanks a lot,” and smiled.
And that was that, after ten yeas of supporting him, that was the closest she’d come to meeting him.
So it was about time.
Here he was, one metre away, browsing vinyls at the Rosebank market. He was with his girlfriend, so Ntsiki hung back, just a step behind them and to the left – just close enough to here what T-Boz was saying to the stallholder.
“What I’m really looking for is one of those old, old record players – those gramophones that play 78s. You now, with the big megaphone on the side?”
“You know, you might be in luck…” was all Ntsiki heard the trader say, because she was out of there before he could finish his sentence. She knew the rest of it anyway: there was an old 78rpm record player barely three aisles over, in the antiques section.
Ntsiki had caught sight of it on her first pass through the market. It had a nice, shiny brass speaker horn on it, that’s how she remembered. But now it meant a lot more to her than a shiny brass horn.
Within seconds she was asking, “How much for the record player?”
“Two thousand,” came the reply.
Gee! For that old thing. Anyway, if that was the price of getting T-Boz’s phone number, then it was well worth it.
“It’s lovely, I’ll take it,” she snapped.
She barely had time to slap her debit card down before T-Boz and his girlfriend were at her elbow.
“No! You not serious!” he gasped. “Don’t tell me you’re buying this. Do you know how long I’ve been looking for one? It must be the last one in Jo’burg!”
It was the first thing he’d ever said to her, really. She was squealing inside, but she managed to keep her composure.
“It’s gorgeous, isn’t it? I’m getting it for my, uh, for my dad. He collects 78s!”
“Really!” T-Boz was impressed! “So do I. What’s he into?”
“Oh, jazz, mostly,” Ntsiki replied matter-of-factly as she nervously eyed the debit-card machine. “Approved” it read, triumphantly.
“I’d love to see his collection!”
He was looking her right in the eye when he said it, with this cute, cute kind of little-boy smile, just begging her to invite him over. Meanwhile his girlfriend was giving her the dirtiest look you could imagine. But T-Boz was in such a record-lover’s trance, he didn’t even notice.
“I tell you what…”
Here Ntsiki paused and put her index finger to her bottom lip, in a way that she knew made her look both cute and intelligent. She’d practised the look many times in her bathroom mirror. Luckily she was wearing her brown wig today, so she gazed up at T-Boz through her fringe, as she said:
“I tell you what. I can see you’re into your music. I’m getting this player as a gift for my dad. I don’t really know what he’s got and what he hasn’t got. So I’ll see if he needs the record player. If he doesn’t, then you can have it. How’s that?”
“Fabulous! I’ll give you my number. Like I say, I’ve been looking for one of these for years. I’m actually a DJ.”
“Oh, ja! Do you play on the radio or in clubs?
“Both, hey. I’m on Jozi FM on drive time and I also play gigs…”
“Oh great! I must listen to your show. Where’s Jozi on the dial?”
Meanwhile she’d had Jozi FM pretuned to setting number one on her car stereo for the past three years.
“It’s 98.1,” said T-Boz. “So anyway, let me give you my number and you can get back to me about this record player. Coz I’m really keen. By the way, this is my girlfriend, Thumeka. I’m sorry, your name is…”
“I’m Ntsiki…”
And all three of them shook hands.
Ntsiki fielded another foul glare from Thumeka but it fairly bounced off her, she was so happy. And she floated out of the Rosebank market with the enormous record player as if it was lighter than air.
The clunky old thing meant nothing to her now. It was just a means to an end. However, on the contacts list of her cellphone nestled the most precious thing she’d ever had.
There’s always someone bigger than you…
Damian had been out of roller hockey for five years. He’d drifted out of the sport when the design graft at Freeflight started getting hectic.
Back then he was so fit he couldn’t handle so much as one beer without getting all dizzy. He had a physique like Bruce Lee, the reactions of a snake wrangler and the scarred good looks of kickboxer.
Five years later, things had got ugly. Dame had let himself go alarmingly. The physique was approaching the one Will Ferrell modelled in Anchorman, his reactions now felt like those of a foreign policy adviser and his scarred good looks were now, well, formerly scarred podgy looks.
Then he bumped into Shaun at the Baron and he mentioned that the okes were playing roller hockey again down at Regents Park. Damian only needed to pat his boep a couple of times to realise how badly he needed to start exercising again.
That weekend he was down at the rink early, ready to hook up with his one-time comrades in arms.
They made a rather motley crew. Shaun was in fairly good shape – probably coz he was still playing provincial cricket. But Bob, Andre and Stefan were at least as overweight as he was, if not worse.
And to think that in 1997 they had represented South Africa at world champs in Chicago. “Yiss, you okes look like Gummy Bears!” said Shaun, kind of rubbing it in.
They were playing a school team from Bridgemead High.
They played two 20-minute halves and it came as no surprise to find the lighties were on a completely different level of fitness to the ageing warriors. Also, because they now had dedicated smooth concrete rinks, they were playing with proper plastic pucks. In the Nineties, they’d played with a ball on asphalt parking lots.
But what Damian also noticed was that while they’d been away, roller hockey had become a sissy sport.
Christ, in their day, it was a proper contact sport. In a 50-50 situation, body-checking was considered compulsory. Now, the kids had no commitment. They gave up the puck like they didn’t really want it.
Which was fine by the men of the Gummy Bears, as they’d christened themselves, despite the fact that they still wore the faded Lions kit they’d last worn in 2000.
Things got way physical, every single 50-50 went the way of the Gummy Bears and by the end of it, three of the Bridgemead lighties had sustained bloody noses, while showing no sign of retaliating. The only fight they showed was when one of the parents came on to the rink and threatened to moer Shaun for “being too physical.”
“Ay,” replied Shaun, “It’s not a game for ninnies.” Even though it so plainly was. But at least the Bears were paying the Bridgemead lighties the compliment of playing with all they had.
In the end, they wiped the rink with the schoolies. Damian body-checked the one lightie right over the hoardings. Ha, ha. The Bears won the game and the brawls.
The next Monday Damian showed up at work a changed man. The seed of his lost youth had germinated inside him. After years of sad decay, he was growing again. He was a conquering warrior.
Those lighties thought they were bok, but they’d showed them who was boss. At the water cooler he lifted his shirt and showed off his bruised ribs to hot Simone.
“That’s from when I charged their goalie right off his feet,” he told her.
“Shame man,” said Simone, “You guys were bullying the poor kids!”
When he got back to his desk Gavin was there waiting with a large briefing envelope.
“Morning,” he said. “We’re pitching this to MTN tomorrow morning. There’s thumbnails in here and some display-copy ideas. We need point-of-sale layouts, a billboard design, package art and three different magazine ads.”
“By tomorrow morning,” spluttered, Damian. “But this’ll take me all night!”
“Looks like you having a late night, then,” said Gavin. “That’s why you get the big bucks.”
“But I’ve got hockey practice…” Damian protested vainly, but Gavin didn’t even hear him. He was heading back to his office. “Have it ready by 8.30,” he called over his shoulder.
At the next desk, Simone was chortling to herself.
“Ja, you see,” she grinned. “Every bully gets bullied sooner or later.”
Damian didn’t respond. He resolved not to speak to Simone for the rest of the week. She was wrong. It wasn’t like that at all.
Back then he was so fit he couldn’t handle so much as one beer without getting all dizzy. He had a physique like Bruce Lee, the reactions of a snake wrangler and the scarred good looks of kickboxer.
Five years later, things had got ugly. Dame had let himself go alarmingly. The physique was approaching the one Will Ferrell modelled in Anchorman, his reactions now felt like those of a foreign policy adviser and his scarred good looks were now, well, formerly scarred podgy looks.
Then he bumped into Shaun at the Baron and he mentioned that the okes were playing roller hockey again down at Regents Park. Damian only needed to pat his boep a couple of times to realise how badly he needed to start exercising again.
That weekend he was down at the rink early, ready to hook up with his one-time comrades in arms.
They made a rather motley crew. Shaun was in fairly good shape – probably coz he was still playing provincial cricket. But Bob, Andre and Stefan were at least as overweight as he was, if not worse.
And to think that in 1997 they had represented South Africa at world champs in Chicago. “Yiss, you okes look like Gummy Bears!” said Shaun, kind of rubbing it in.
They were playing a school team from Bridgemead High.
They played two 20-minute halves and it came as no surprise to find the lighties were on a completely different level of fitness to the ageing warriors. Also, because they now had dedicated smooth concrete rinks, they were playing with proper plastic pucks. In the Nineties, they’d played with a ball on asphalt parking lots.
But what Damian also noticed was that while they’d been away, roller hockey had become a sissy sport.
Christ, in their day, it was a proper contact sport. In a 50-50 situation, body-checking was considered compulsory. Now, the kids had no commitment. They gave up the puck like they didn’t really want it.
Which was fine by the men of the Gummy Bears, as they’d christened themselves, despite the fact that they still wore the faded Lions kit they’d last worn in 2000.
Things got way physical, every single 50-50 went the way of the Gummy Bears and by the end of it, three of the Bridgemead lighties had sustained bloody noses, while showing no sign of retaliating. The only fight they showed was when one of the parents came on to the rink and threatened to moer Shaun for “being too physical.”
“Ay,” replied Shaun, “It’s not a game for ninnies.” Even though it so plainly was. But at least the Bears were paying the Bridgemead lighties the compliment of playing with all they had.
In the end, they wiped the rink with the schoolies. Damian body-checked the one lightie right over the hoardings. Ha, ha. The Bears won the game and the brawls.
The next Monday Damian showed up at work a changed man. The seed of his lost youth had germinated inside him. After years of sad decay, he was growing again. He was a conquering warrior.
Those lighties thought they were bok, but they’d showed them who was boss. At the water cooler he lifted his shirt and showed off his bruised ribs to hot Simone.
“That’s from when I charged their goalie right off his feet,” he told her.
“Shame man,” said Simone, “You guys were bullying the poor kids!”
When he got back to his desk Gavin was there waiting with a large briefing envelope.
“Morning,” he said. “We’re pitching this to MTN tomorrow morning. There’s thumbnails in here and some display-copy ideas. We need point-of-sale layouts, a billboard design, package art and three different magazine ads.”
“By tomorrow morning,” spluttered, Damian. “But this’ll take me all night!”
“Looks like you having a late night, then,” said Gavin. “That’s why you get the big bucks.”
“But I’ve got hockey practice…” Damian protested vainly, but Gavin didn’t even hear him. He was heading back to his office. “Have it ready by 8.30,” he called over his shoulder.
At the next desk, Simone was chortling to herself.
“Ja, you see,” she grinned. “Every bully gets bullied sooner or later.”
Damian didn’t respond. He resolved not to speak to Simone for the rest of the week. She was wrong. It wasn’t like that at all.
Making a living with the innocence of children
Eddie was a special child. One of those people who clearly have something different about them. Perhaps he had a chromosome missing, or a nurse had dropped him on his head when he was born. On the other hand, perhaps he was born of a virgin birth, or he came down from heaven. He was that kind of special too.
He was constantly smiling and seemed to have no iota of shyness about him, despite having at first glance the intelligence of a child. He used children’s words and he seemed to hold beliefs that were fanciful at best, but on further reflection, they carried deep truths.
He visited the bank almost daily, having first struck up a friendship with Samson, the security guard. Then he started coming into the bank itself. He met Yvonne, the customer service co-ordinator, whose job it was to greet anyone who looked like they needed assistance.
Eddie was about 35, with a childlike bowl haircut – the kind his mother might have given him. That first day he stared around the bank, with a mischievous smile and knitted eyebrows, like he was looking for something.
“Can I help you, sir” Yvonne asked.
“Where do you keep the money,” Eddie wanted to know.
It had taken her a while to explain that he couldn’t see the vaults, and secondly, that banks didn’t work with as much physical money as they used to.
“So you don’t have any cash here”
“Some,” Yvonne explained. “But not much. Most people get their cash from the ATMs.”
“So why don’t you put the guards at the ATMs instead of at the banks,” he asked.
Yvonne had to admit he had her there. Why didn’t they?
The next time he was in, he stuck his hand out and tickled her under her armpit until she giggled awkwardly. “That’s better,” he said. “It’s nice to see someone laughing in here. You’d think more people would laugh in banks. They all here to fetch lots of money.”
Yvonne pointed out that a lot of people were there to spend money, so there were sad people too.
“Well then they should spend their money on things that make them happy,” he said.
A couple of days after that, he came in to visit and brought her some flowers that he’d picked for her in the flowerbeds outside. He told her, “Do you know you work in a pyramid?”
She hadn’t understood what he meant, until he took her for a walk to the top of Sandton City during her lunch break and showed her the roof the bank building. It was a perfect, four-sided equilateral pyramid. She did work in a pyramid.
“I think it looks like a church,” said Eddie. “It’s like a church of money.”
The next time he came in, he produced a R5 coin and said he wanted to open an account. Yvonne had to explain to him that the minimum balance for normal savings accounts was R50.
“So if you’re not rich, then you can’t save?” he asked.
She had helped him assemble the R50 in order to teach him the rudiments of saving and interest, then been embarrassed to discover that most of his investment was gobbled up by service charges.
Eddie was crushed to learn that the R50 proceeds of his begging and street hustling had been reduced to a mere R29,64 within a month.
“No wonder the poor people don’t save with you,” he proclaimed angrily, then insisted that his account be closed.
“I think I’ll keep my money in my pocket from now on,” he said, with tears in his eyes.
Shame. To make him feel better, Yvonne introduced him to Mr Smit, the bank manager, and got permission to show him around the vaults.
He was surprised that the wads of banknotes weren’t bigger. “Don’t people need cash any more?” he wanted to know.
Yvonne said that she supposed not.
“So, what’s the most cash that you need?” he asked.
Yvonne smiled fondly at the innocence of his question. “Well, to be honest, Eddie, all you really need is about two hundred rand for petrol… otherwise, most people use bank transfers.”
“Two hundred rand?” Eddie mused. Then his tone changed. “Nah. I think I’ll take the lot.”
He produced a nine-mil handgun and a plastic Checkers bag and told Yvonne, “Now if you don’t mind filling this up for me…”
His childish smile had vanished.
He was constantly smiling and seemed to have no iota of shyness about him, despite having at first glance the intelligence of a child. He used children’s words and he seemed to hold beliefs that were fanciful at best, but on further reflection, they carried deep truths.
He visited the bank almost daily, having first struck up a friendship with Samson, the security guard. Then he started coming into the bank itself. He met Yvonne, the customer service co-ordinator, whose job it was to greet anyone who looked like they needed assistance.
Eddie was about 35, with a childlike bowl haircut – the kind his mother might have given him. That first day he stared around the bank, with a mischievous smile and knitted eyebrows, like he was looking for something.
“Can I help you, sir” Yvonne asked.
“Where do you keep the money,” Eddie wanted to know.
It had taken her a while to explain that he couldn’t see the vaults, and secondly, that banks didn’t work with as much physical money as they used to.
“So you don’t have any cash here”
“Some,” Yvonne explained. “But not much. Most people get their cash from the ATMs.”
“So why don’t you put the guards at the ATMs instead of at the banks,” he asked.
Yvonne had to admit he had her there. Why didn’t they?
The next time he was in, he stuck his hand out and tickled her under her armpit until she giggled awkwardly. “That’s better,” he said. “It’s nice to see someone laughing in here. You’d think more people would laugh in banks. They all here to fetch lots of money.”
Yvonne pointed out that a lot of people were there to spend money, so there were sad people too.
“Well then they should spend their money on things that make them happy,” he said.
A couple of days after that, he came in to visit and brought her some flowers that he’d picked for her in the flowerbeds outside. He told her, “Do you know you work in a pyramid?”
She hadn’t understood what he meant, until he took her for a walk to the top of Sandton City during her lunch break and showed her the roof the bank building. It was a perfect, four-sided equilateral pyramid. She did work in a pyramid.
“I think it looks like a church,” said Eddie. “It’s like a church of money.”
The next time he came in, he produced a R5 coin and said he wanted to open an account. Yvonne had to explain to him that the minimum balance for normal savings accounts was R50.
“So if you’re not rich, then you can’t save?” he asked.
She had helped him assemble the R50 in order to teach him the rudiments of saving and interest, then been embarrassed to discover that most of his investment was gobbled up by service charges.
Eddie was crushed to learn that the R50 proceeds of his begging and street hustling had been reduced to a mere R29,64 within a month.
“No wonder the poor people don’t save with you,” he proclaimed angrily, then insisted that his account be closed.
“I think I’ll keep my money in my pocket from now on,” he said, with tears in his eyes.
Shame. To make him feel better, Yvonne introduced him to Mr Smit, the bank manager, and got permission to show him around the vaults.
He was surprised that the wads of banknotes weren’t bigger. “Don’t people need cash any more?” he wanted to know.
Yvonne said that she supposed not.
“So, what’s the most cash that you need?” he asked.
Yvonne smiled fondly at the innocence of his question. “Well, to be honest, Eddie, all you really need is about two hundred rand for petrol… otherwise, most people use bank transfers.”
“Two hundred rand?” Eddie mused. Then his tone changed. “Nah. I think I’ll take the lot.”
He produced a nine-mil handgun and a plastic Checkers bag and told Yvonne, “Now if you don’t mind filling this up for me…”
His childish smile had vanished.
Friday, January 16, 2009
Shake, rattle and too much rock ’n’ roll
It started as an absent-minded habit he indulged in when he was thinking of something else. This little thing he did with his thumb and forefinger, a little rubbing action.
Then it became a tic, a little tremor. He first noticed it one evening when he’d just finished jamming with the band. He was having a cigarette on the patio outside the jam spot, when he looked down at his right hand and saw ash falling from his shaking hand. He thought, “Hang on, I’m not shaking my hand. It’s shaking itself!”
He thought he was just a little buzzed from the rehearsal, or his hand was tired from strumming the guitar. It went away after a few minutes.
But a week later it came back. He was chilling in the cafeteria at college, having a fruit juice, when he noticed concentric rings, little waves, in the bottle of Clover Krush he was drinking.
He was trembling again, and it was like that scene in The China Syndrome, where the power station’s nuclear meltdown caused ripples in the coffee cups. There was something seriously amiss here.
RSI was the first thing he thought of. Repetitive strain injury from all those years spent playing guitar. Then he started thinking it might be something to do with circulation. Simon hadn’t weighed himself in more than a year, but it was a safe bet that he was well overweight. Deep into triple figures. One-twenty or so, he estimated…
Maybe it was circulation. Hopefully it was just circulation.
So Simon made his doctor’s appointment largely seeking confirmation that he’d let himself get too fat, and that was somehow cutting off the circulation to his right hand. And of course he hoped, he needed, he was praying to hear that he didn’t have the big P. Or perhaps the big A. Was Parkinson's the one that made you tremble, or was that Alzheimer’s. He could never remember.
It was either that, or carpal tunnel syndrome, he told himself. Or maybe deep-vein thrombosis, from the time he flew to Cape Town for his mate Chombit’s wedding.
He had no medical aid either, so the 400 bucks for the appointment was coming out of his own pocket. Well, the Roxy’s pocket, since that’s where they played their last gig. His split of the bucks came to exactly R400.
The afternoon before his appointment, his top lip started trembling, and that’s when he knew it was definitely Parky’s. He was dying of Parkinson’s, same as Michael J Fox. All that remained was for Dr Meier to confirm it.
Perhaps he could get the band to do a Parkinson’s benefit gig while he could still hold a guitar. Or write a song called, oh, I Feel It In My Fingers. No, not that. Been done.
So that night he breaks down and tells the band okes that he’s dying: “I don’t know how much longer I’m going to be able to keep playing with you okes. I’ve got this syndrome, and it’s getting worse…”
“Ja,” said Chunley, the bass player. “I been drinking like a fish lately too.”
Fuckall sympathy. He decided the band didn’t deserve to know about his plight. They lacked basic empathy, so he would soldier on and bear the load of his impending death alone.
Anyway, he goes to doctor Meier, pays the 400 bucks and hesitantly outlines his bleak and ominous symptoms. The trembling, the facial tics, the poor circulation…
The guy says he needs a full check-up, pokes and prods him, takes his temperature, weighs him, probes him, for crying out loud, and then takes blood for testing. Says it sounds like it might be Bells Palsy.
On the return visit, by which time, Simon’s getting tremors all over his face and making twitchy winking moves. The oke tells him he’s got a static tremor. He says he should try dopping a bit less and it should be cleared up within a week or so.
Another few hundred bucks later, sure enough, the tremors are gone and Chunley wants to know if he’s still dying and whether they should start auditioning new singers.
It’s not funny, and Simon tells him so. In the end they do write a song about it. It’s called Probity.
In between gigs and band practice, Simon eyes the exercise bicycle in the corner of his room and rubs his thumb and forefinger together.
Sometimes it makes him drop his cigarette.
Then it became a tic, a little tremor. He first noticed it one evening when he’d just finished jamming with the band. He was having a cigarette on the patio outside the jam spot, when he looked down at his right hand and saw ash falling from his shaking hand. He thought, “Hang on, I’m not shaking my hand. It’s shaking itself!”
He thought he was just a little buzzed from the rehearsal, or his hand was tired from strumming the guitar. It went away after a few minutes.
But a week later it came back. He was chilling in the cafeteria at college, having a fruit juice, when he noticed concentric rings, little waves, in the bottle of Clover Krush he was drinking.
He was trembling again, and it was like that scene in The China Syndrome, where the power station’s nuclear meltdown caused ripples in the coffee cups. There was something seriously amiss here.
RSI was the first thing he thought of. Repetitive strain injury from all those years spent playing guitar. Then he started thinking it might be something to do with circulation. Simon hadn’t weighed himself in more than a year, but it was a safe bet that he was well overweight. Deep into triple figures. One-twenty or so, he estimated…
Maybe it was circulation. Hopefully it was just circulation.
So Simon made his doctor’s appointment largely seeking confirmation that he’d let himself get too fat, and that was somehow cutting off the circulation to his right hand. And of course he hoped, he needed, he was praying to hear that he didn’t have the big P. Or perhaps the big A. Was Parkinson's the one that made you tremble, or was that Alzheimer’s. He could never remember.
It was either that, or carpal tunnel syndrome, he told himself. Or maybe deep-vein thrombosis, from the time he flew to Cape Town for his mate Chombit’s wedding.
He had no medical aid either, so the 400 bucks for the appointment was coming out of his own pocket. Well, the Roxy’s pocket, since that’s where they played their last gig. His split of the bucks came to exactly R400.
The afternoon before his appointment, his top lip started trembling, and that’s when he knew it was definitely Parky’s. He was dying of Parkinson’s, same as Michael J Fox. All that remained was for Dr Meier to confirm it.
Perhaps he could get the band to do a Parkinson’s benefit gig while he could still hold a guitar. Or write a song called, oh, I Feel It In My Fingers. No, not that. Been done.
So that night he breaks down and tells the band okes that he’s dying: “I don’t know how much longer I’m going to be able to keep playing with you okes. I’ve got this syndrome, and it’s getting worse…”
“Ja,” said Chunley, the bass player. “I been drinking like a fish lately too.”
Fuckall sympathy. He decided the band didn’t deserve to know about his plight. They lacked basic empathy, so he would soldier on and bear the load of his impending death alone.
Anyway, he goes to doctor Meier, pays the 400 bucks and hesitantly outlines his bleak and ominous symptoms. The trembling, the facial tics, the poor circulation…
The guy says he needs a full check-up, pokes and prods him, takes his temperature, weighs him, probes him, for crying out loud, and then takes blood for testing. Says it sounds like it might be Bells Palsy.
On the return visit, by which time, Simon’s getting tremors all over his face and making twitchy winking moves. The oke tells him he’s got a static tremor. He says he should try dopping a bit less and it should be cleared up within a week or so.
Another few hundred bucks later, sure enough, the tremors are gone and Chunley wants to know if he’s still dying and whether they should start auditioning new singers.
It’s not funny, and Simon tells him so. In the end they do write a song about it. It’s called Probity.
In between gigs and band practice, Simon eyes the exercise bicycle in the corner of his room and rubs his thumb and forefinger together.
Sometimes it makes him drop his cigarette.
Barking like a dog, raw knuckles and other firefighting methods
The long, white-knuckle overnight drive, the wrong turns, the near-death passing-out experience outside Hoyfmeyr… If you considered all the complexities of Gavin’s drive down from Jo’burg to PE, you wouldn’t blame him if he lit up a cigarette the minute he descended Colchester hill and realised he was home and dry, back in the Bay.
You wouldn’t begrudge him that well-deserved ciggie, but somehow, throughout the eight-hour drive that ended up taking eleven and a half, Gav never even once considered lighting up. He wasn’t a smoker, see. Never had been.
It was more an aversion to lighters than tobacco smoke, actually.
And the source of that aversion can be traced to Gavin’s childhood in Ben Kamma in Port Elizabeth’s wooded, westernmost suburbs.
When the young Gavin turned six in the late Seventies, his family’s two-bedroom home was in fact the last house in PE. When he hopped over the vibracrete wall after his half-day of sub-A schoolgoing, it was right into the virgin bush of the undeveloped wilds. The Wild West! Baakens River crabs the size of hubcaps, dark, mysterious eucalyptus forests and, in the distance, the Lady’s Slipper looming over it all, blue and ominous, like a witch’s castle in some scary fairytale.
There were two last houses in PE, because Gavin’s family had neighbours, an Afrikaans couple from Oudtshoorn. They were the only two houses in the new development at the top end of Walker Drive.
Now Gavin was an only child, and he loved his parents dearly, especially his mother Pam. His father Nick worked long hours at the government garage, so little Gav spent most of his afternoons after school with Pam watching the beginnings of SABC TV.
On SABC, Gavin’s favourite programme was a show called Here’s Boomer, about a heroic mongrel dog named Boomer. It was Here’s Boomer that caused all the trouble.
An episode that caught Gavin’s imagination for all the wrong reasons was the one where Boomer saved a family from a runaway forest fire. Basically he came and woke them up by barking a lot, just as the blaze was about to surround their mountain log cabin.
Most of Boomer’s heroics involved alerting the humans with a lot of barking. And they always seemed to understand what his barking meant.
But what Gav enjoyed most about that episode was the powerful footage of the outrageous forest fire. Sheets of flame. Entire mountainsides on fire! Trees exploding from the sheer heat! Helicopters dropping water bombs!
Somehow, that episode of Here’s Boomer awakened the pyromaniac in Gavin, and he decided to set fire to the forest behind his house.
In those days everyone smoked. Gav stole his mom’s cigarette lighter, hopped the vibracrete and set about trying to light the nearest patch of grass.
After ten minutes of flicking his mom’s Bic, he had not yet managed to generate any kind of blaze. But the neighbour from Oudtshoorn had spotted him.
“Hey! What the hell are you doing? Are you trying to burn down the forest?”
It was the first time a strange adult had ever raised his voice at him. All he could think of to say was, “I’m cold.”
“Well then tell your mom to give you a bladdy jersey,” the man bellowed, then grabbed him by the ear and dragged him off home, where he was presented to Pam, a sobbing, snotty mess.
“I found him next door trying to start a fire. He says he’s cold.”
“I’m terribly sorry,” said Pam. “Thanks for bringing him home.”
The man did not seem satisfied. “What kind of a mother are you?” he asked. “You sit at home all day and you still can’t even look after your lightie. If he was my lightie I’d give him a bladdy hiding. And give him a jersey for God’s sake. Check how he’s shaking!”
That evening was the first time Gavin saw his mother crying.
He earned a clip behind his ear too. “I’ve never been so embarrassed in my life,” Pam wailed, as Gain chewed his knuckles in shame. “Did you hear what he said? I was absolutely mortified.”
Gavin dearly loved Pam, his mother and TV-watching companion. So when she said, “And don’t let me ever catch you playing with my lighter again,” he was inclined to listen.
That’s why, despite a harrowing drive down to PE from Jo’burg, Gavin Bull was not smoking a cigarette as he passed Algorax and took the Settlers Way turn-off. Instead, he chewed on top knuckle of his left hand.
You wouldn’t begrudge him that well-deserved ciggie, but somehow, throughout the eight-hour drive that ended up taking eleven and a half, Gav never even once considered lighting up. He wasn’t a smoker, see. Never had been.
It was more an aversion to lighters than tobacco smoke, actually.
And the source of that aversion can be traced to Gavin’s childhood in Ben Kamma in Port Elizabeth’s wooded, westernmost suburbs.
When the young Gavin turned six in the late Seventies, his family’s two-bedroom home was in fact the last house in PE. When he hopped over the vibracrete wall after his half-day of sub-A schoolgoing, it was right into the virgin bush of the undeveloped wilds. The Wild West! Baakens River crabs the size of hubcaps, dark, mysterious eucalyptus forests and, in the distance, the Lady’s Slipper looming over it all, blue and ominous, like a witch’s castle in some scary fairytale.
There were two last houses in PE, because Gavin’s family had neighbours, an Afrikaans couple from Oudtshoorn. They were the only two houses in the new development at the top end of Walker Drive.
Now Gavin was an only child, and he loved his parents dearly, especially his mother Pam. His father Nick worked long hours at the government garage, so little Gav spent most of his afternoons after school with Pam watching the beginnings of SABC TV.
On SABC, Gavin’s favourite programme was a show called Here’s Boomer, about a heroic mongrel dog named Boomer. It was Here’s Boomer that caused all the trouble.
An episode that caught Gavin’s imagination for all the wrong reasons was the one where Boomer saved a family from a runaway forest fire. Basically he came and woke them up by barking a lot, just as the blaze was about to surround their mountain log cabin.
Most of Boomer’s heroics involved alerting the humans with a lot of barking. And they always seemed to understand what his barking meant.
But what Gav enjoyed most about that episode was the powerful footage of the outrageous forest fire. Sheets of flame. Entire mountainsides on fire! Trees exploding from the sheer heat! Helicopters dropping water bombs!
Somehow, that episode of Here’s Boomer awakened the pyromaniac in Gavin, and he decided to set fire to the forest behind his house.
In those days everyone smoked. Gav stole his mom’s cigarette lighter, hopped the vibracrete and set about trying to light the nearest patch of grass.
After ten minutes of flicking his mom’s Bic, he had not yet managed to generate any kind of blaze. But the neighbour from Oudtshoorn had spotted him.
“Hey! What the hell are you doing? Are you trying to burn down the forest?”
It was the first time a strange adult had ever raised his voice at him. All he could think of to say was, “I’m cold.”
“Well then tell your mom to give you a bladdy jersey,” the man bellowed, then grabbed him by the ear and dragged him off home, where he was presented to Pam, a sobbing, snotty mess.
“I found him next door trying to start a fire. He says he’s cold.”
“I’m terribly sorry,” said Pam. “Thanks for bringing him home.”
The man did not seem satisfied. “What kind of a mother are you?” he asked. “You sit at home all day and you still can’t even look after your lightie. If he was my lightie I’d give him a bladdy hiding. And give him a jersey for God’s sake. Check how he’s shaking!”
That evening was the first time Gavin saw his mother crying.
He earned a clip behind his ear too. “I’ve never been so embarrassed in my life,” Pam wailed, as Gain chewed his knuckles in shame. “Did you hear what he said? I was absolutely mortified.”
Gavin dearly loved Pam, his mother and TV-watching companion. So when she said, “And don’t let me ever catch you playing with my lighter again,” he was inclined to listen.
That’s why, despite a harrowing drive down to PE from Jo’burg, Gavin Bull was not smoking a cigarette as he passed Algorax and took the Settlers Way turn-off. Instead, he chewed on top knuckle of his left hand.
Angels in the upholstery. Had to be
Gavin got approval on the cellphone print campaign late on Monday evening. He’d worked out that he’d have to be back in Jo’burg by the following Monday. So if he was going to have any kind of holiday, he’d have to leave for Port Elizabeth immediately.
He’d worked late for five nights straight, so if he went to sleep now, he’d probably sleep the whole of Tuesday. Then he’d have to drive on Wednesday, drive back Sunday… His holiday in the bay would be reduced to three days.
Nah, bugger it, he thought. He’d buy three Red Bulls at the Grayston Drive BP, fill up with unleaded and hit the road.
The Z3 could do the thousand-odd kays to PE in eight hours if he chose the right route. Bloem, Colesberg, Venterstad, Steynsburg, Hofmeyr, Cradock, PE. And the roads would be empty in the early-morning hours.
It was about 10pm when Gavin got his change from the petrol attendant, reset his odometer and pointed the roadster at Madiba Bay.
The first Bullie worked its magic and the 300km to Bloemfontein flew by in what seemed like no time. He topped up his tank with unleaded, as the AA had recommended, grabbed a bag of peri-peri biltong snap sticks – more out of diligence than hunger – and continued.
He took the Norvalspont turn-off just before Colesberg and skirted the Gariep Dam en route to Venterstad.
He’d driven this route before, and something in the back of his mind told him there was a sneaky turn-off ahead. He just couldn’t remember what exactly it was. He sipped his second Red Bull as he approached Venterstad.
Five hours out of Jo’burg, Gavin found himself in Burgersdorp. The only problem was he wasn’t supposed to be there.
Around 4am, Gav pulled into a deserted petrol station on Burgersdorp’s main road, dug out the AA Book Of The Road and recalibrated. Mmm, there it was. He’d missed the right turn to Steynsburg just before Venterstad. He’d have to go back 65 kays. Unless…
A closer look at the map seemed to indicate a route to Hofmeyr that would let him rejoin his cunning route with little delay. The R391. The map showed a red line that became a pink line after a while. Did that mean a gravel road?
No matter – it would only be about 30-odd kays of gravel at the most.
Soon enough, Gav was rattling along on a dusty farm road barely wide enough to accommodate the width of the Z3. Grass as high as his windowsill licked at the mirrors as he slewed from side to side, trying to maintain a hundred.
A sick Red Bull heartburn rose in his gut, even as his eyelids began to droop…
The next thing to register in Gavin Bull’s brain was an upside-down view of a dusty farm road just before sunrise. He’d fallen asleep! And his head had slumped into an inverted position! He was halfway onto the passenger seat! Before he could pull himself upright, there came the quite unique wickety-wickety-wickety sound generated by a BMW Z3 slewing down a barbed-wire fence at about a hundred kays an hour, uprooting poles as it went.
As the fence wires tore loose they lashed across the windscreen, the barbs shrieking against the glass and gouging striations out of the Shatterprufe.
All of this looks quite spectacular when viewed upside down, with one’s head against the passenger-seat headrest, as the latest Zola album plays loud and mysterious on the car stereo.
By the time Gavin’s brain registered what the implications of wickety-wickety-wickety and the shrieking and the gouging striations were for him and his upside-down life, there was an upside-down tree in view as well…
Brakes were applied not a moment too soon, and the value of ABS braking was demonstrated once again, as dawn lit upon the Hofmeyr district, providing just enough light for Gavin Bull to eventually savour the beauty of life anew beneath a wizened wattle tree on the R391.
As Gav stared out at the world from the driver’s seat of his stationary Z3, the Eastern Cape looked more beautiful than it had ever seemed to him.
He would spend his holiday in PE with a spiralling striation pattern across the bonnet and left side of his car quite unmatched in the history of automotive décor.
He would also spend the holiday with a brand-new belief in the existence of angels. Because after all, it was an angel who’d woken him up that morning around dawn on the R391 outside Hofmeyr. And angel had saved his life. Had to be.
Sticky afternoons in hell: Jo’burg summer
The air-con guys had been in since mid-November and still there was no cool air.
After two years of sporadic climate control in the Freeflight office, the contractors had decided to rip everything out and start again. The right idea, sure, but that didn’t make deadline Friday afternoons any less sticky, humid and short-tempered.
As the client came back with the fifth design change in four days, reverting to the same picture of the nerd in his underpants that they’d started with on Tuesday, Gavin felt himself losing pluck. What was the point? They were right back where they started!
They’d be working the weekend now. No doubt about it. Saturday and Sunday.
Meanwhile, Christo the designer was in rehab, Gift had taken leave and Josie had taken the day off to take delivery of her new couches. There were three of them trying to do the work of six in this stuffy office with no bloody air-conditioning!
And every media planner who came by on business would ask, “So when you taking off?” completely not realising how rude that was. Mentioning holidays in an office where people were working their asses off!
That was like mentioning Chipniks and dip in a diet class.
Christ, it needed to rain today! You could choke on the humidity in the air. You could reach out and grab a handful of it.
Gavin could see the M1 from his office and he knew the traffic was going to be mayhem. There’d been a cash-in-transit heist near the Woodmead offramp and the cars were already crawling at 2pm. It was only going to get worse as more people knocked off and started heading for their beige, faux-Mediterranean townhouse complexes in Jo’burg, Pretoria, Midrand, Centurion, Paulshof, Kyasands and everywhere fuckin’ else.
Ag, he’d just try klap it till about eight and then hopefully miss the worst of it.
He got more work done when he was alone in the office, anyway. If only the office radio was working properly. Then Ian F and Sasha Martinengo wouldn’t sound like someone was mowing a lawn behind them.
Someone was stealing from the office too. A box of cosmetics that still needed packshots done had gone missing after it had been signed for at reception. It was someone in the office. Maybe one of the messengers.
The drinks fridge was being opened at noon every day, so Gav was already on his third Bavaria of this day – working through the urge to go visit lovely Simone in the graphics office down the corridor. When he finished packaging this latest version of the ad and had ISDNed it to the client for the next lot of corrections, then he would reward himself with a visit to Simone.
And who’d gone and bought Bavaria beers? Why couldn’t they get Peroni or something decent?
He could smell his own sweat already. Because of the humidity and the uninstalled aircon and the stress a thousand beers would not be able to alleviate. Still, he had another suck on his Bavaria. Okes were on the dop system at Freeflight these days.
Besides Thabo, who was rolling himself a bifta at his desk.
Around three the sky began darkening and at four the storm broke – just as Gavin clicked on “send” in his dialogue box and the job vanished down the pipe to the client’s agency.
Lightning illuminated the curtainless office as he skipped down the passage to visit Simone on the first visit he was allowing himself today. He brought a couple of Bavarias for them to share. But her office was empty. She’d pushed off early.
Who could blame her?
That was all he could take. He placed both beers on Simone’s desk and walked downstairs. As he walked outside, the rainstorm was breathing its last. Intermittent raindrops splashed on his face as he cast his eyes skywards and breathed in the fragrant earthiness.
Aaah! That was better. Rivulets rain down his cheeks like tears of relief. He opened his mouth and lapped a few droplets from the sky.
Water.
That’s what he needed. There and then Gavin resolved to go on holiday. He would finish that blasted cellphone campaign, find a tank of unleaded petrol somewhere in Jo’burg and head for the coast. He would drive to Port Elizabeth, where an ocean of water would bathe his beery body and wash the troubles from his worried mind.
By way of agreement, like a wink from the heavens, the skies cleared a little and a sunbeam lit upon the entrance to Freeflight Design.
Yes. By next week he would be swimming in the sea.
After two years of sporadic climate control in the Freeflight office, the contractors had decided to rip everything out and start again. The right idea, sure, but that didn’t make deadline Friday afternoons any less sticky, humid and short-tempered.
As the client came back with the fifth design change in four days, reverting to the same picture of the nerd in his underpants that they’d started with on Tuesday, Gavin felt himself losing pluck. What was the point? They were right back where they started!
They’d be working the weekend now. No doubt about it. Saturday and Sunday.
Meanwhile, Christo the designer was in rehab, Gift had taken leave and Josie had taken the day off to take delivery of her new couches. There were three of them trying to do the work of six in this stuffy office with no bloody air-conditioning!
And every media planner who came by on business would ask, “So when you taking off?” completely not realising how rude that was. Mentioning holidays in an office where people were working their asses off!
That was like mentioning Chipniks and dip in a diet class.
Christ, it needed to rain today! You could choke on the humidity in the air. You could reach out and grab a handful of it.
Gavin could see the M1 from his office and he knew the traffic was going to be mayhem. There’d been a cash-in-transit heist near the Woodmead offramp and the cars were already crawling at 2pm. It was only going to get worse as more people knocked off and started heading for their beige, faux-Mediterranean townhouse complexes in Jo’burg, Pretoria, Midrand, Centurion, Paulshof, Kyasands and everywhere fuckin’ else.
Ag, he’d just try klap it till about eight and then hopefully miss the worst of it.
He got more work done when he was alone in the office, anyway. If only the office radio was working properly. Then Ian F and Sasha Martinengo wouldn’t sound like someone was mowing a lawn behind them.
Someone was stealing from the office too. A box of cosmetics that still needed packshots done had gone missing after it had been signed for at reception. It was someone in the office. Maybe one of the messengers.
The drinks fridge was being opened at noon every day, so Gav was already on his third Bavaria of this day – working through the urge to go visit lovely Simone in the graphics office down the corridor. When he finished packaging this latest version of the ad and had ISDNed it to the client for the next lot of corrections, then he would reward himself with a visit to Simone.
And who’d gone and bought Bavaria beers? Why couldn’t they get Peroni or something decent?
He could smell his own sweat already. Because of the humidity and the uninstalled aircon and the stress a thousand beers would not be able to alleviate. Still, he had another suck on his Bavaria. Okes were on the dop system at Freeflight these days.
Besides Thabo, who was rolling himself a bifta at his desk.
Around three the sky began darkening and at four the storm broke – just as Gavin clicked on “send” in his dialogue box and the job vanished down the pipe to the client’s agency.
Lightning illuminated the curtainless office as he skipped down the passage to visit Simone on the first visit he was allowing himself today. He brought a couple of Bavarias for them to share. But her office was empty. She’d pushed off early.
Who could blame her?
That was all he could take. He placed both beers on Simone’s desk and walked downstairs. As he walked outside, the rainstorm was breathing its last. Intermittent raindrops splashed on his face as he cast his eyes skywards and breathed in the fragrant earthiness.
Aaah! That was better. Rivulets rain down his cheeks like tears of relief. He opened his mouth and lapped a few droplets from the sky.
Water.
That’s what he needed. There and then Gavin resolved to go on holiday. He would finish that blasted cellphone campaign, find a tank of unleaded petrol somewhere in Jo’burg and head for the coast. He would drive to Port Elizabeth, where an ocean of water would bathe his beery body and wash the troubles from his worried mind.
By way of agreement, like a wink from the heavens, the skies cleared a little and a sunbeam lit upon the entrance to Freeflight Design.
Yes. By next week he would be swimming in the sea.
People who ask you for money: the curse of being nice
An open face had been Russel’s curse for as long as he’d lived.
It was his open face that got him called to everyone’s desk at work to help them download new fonts. His open face made him the go-to guy when you needed a lift to pick your car up from the garage.
And why was he the guy all the women in the office confided in when they had a crush on the new guy? Why, because of his open, boyish, unthreatening features and his slightly effeminate mannerisms, of course.
Russel had a habit of looking people right in the left eye, something he’d not been able to unlearn despite having lived in Johannesburg for five years.
This made him a sitting duck for every beggar, scammer, charlatan and panhandler on the streets and in the shopping malls of Gauteng, Tshwane and Ekhuruleni.
“Hau, Chief,” was a common opening line among the robot beggars, Homeless Talk salesmen and windscreen washers, often followed by that fist-to-fist handshake where you twist your thumbs together.
But most scary were the chancers. A guy at a robot will generally be satisfied with two bucks. A Homeless Talk costs R4 a month, but certain moneygrubbers set their sights higher than that.
They’re the types you only see once in your life. Not for them the reliable routine of a patch on the corner of Rivonia and Grayston. These loons roam Jo’burg ceaselessly, scamming the innocent, the soft-hearted and the open-faced with their transparent lies and shameless fabrications.
Like the sunburnt lunatic wearing a beanie whom Russel had once encountered in the parking lot behind the Market Theatre. He’d come up to him bearing a clipboard and a pen.
“Name?” he’d asked, the minute Russel had finished parking his car. “Mmm. How do you spell that? Okay, now please fill in your address.”
Before he knew it, Russel had complied.
“Thank you. How much will you be donating?”
The next thing you know, he’d given the guy ten bucks – and told him where he lived. And he wasn’t even the car guard!
Another time an Indian-looking woman had accosted him in the Grayston Shopping Centre parking lot.
“Hi there. Sorry. Are you in too much of a hurry? No? I’ve just finished my aromatherapy diploma and I’m busy collecting money to start a website so I can open my own business. If you could help with a hundred rand, fifty rand... Or even just twenty rand…”
He’d been half looking over his shoulder at her with his open face, on the way to the video shop. It just seemed easier to give her the bucks than argue the pointlessness of aromatherapy websites. Also, there’d been a swarthy-looking boyfriend type leaning against his car right next to the lady, monitoring her progress.
These people were mad. It was worth twenty bucks to avoid getting into conversation with them. You never knew what they might be capable of.
But the craziest conversation Russel’s approachable demeanour ever got him into was at the Killarney Mall on a Saturday afternoon, just before the five o’clock movie.
A teenage guy had come up to him just outside Woolworths carrying a cardboard egg box.
“Hi there, I’m a student. Are you a student perhaps? No? You know how all the varsities have initiation? Well I’m going through initiation at the moment, so if you give me five rand, I’ll let you break this egg on my head.”
He had only two eggs in his egg box and showed no signs of anyone else having accepted his offer.
Russel so knew he had to get away from this person.
“It’s to raise money for my hostel’s rugby tour,” the lunatic continued. This in mid-November! On the periphery of Russel’s vision was a girl, possibly a sidekick, with another egg box.
He had frantically fished out R4,35 in change from his jeans pocket and retreated into Woollies as if on a highly important mission.
When he emerged ten minutes later with a bag of pork crackling-flavoured crisps, the hustlers were gone, and he was able to make his way to the Killarney Nu Metro unmolested.
As luck would have it, he came up three rand short for his popcorn and a Coke. He had to bum a few bucks off the couple behind him in the queue. They both looked at him a little funny.
It was his open face that got him called to everyone’s desk at work to help them download new fonts. His open face made him the go-to guy when you needed a lift to pick your car up from the garage.
And why was he the guy all the women in the office confided in when they had a crush on the new guy? Why, because of his open, boyish, unthreatening features and his slightly effeminate mannerisms, of course.
Russel had a habit of looking people right in the left eye, something he’d not been able to unlearn despite having lived in Johannesburg for five years.
This made him a sitting duck for every beggar, scammer, charlatan and panhandler on the streets and in the shopping malls of Gauteng, Tshwane and Ekhuruleni.
“Hau, Chief,” was a common opening line among the robot beggars, Homeless Talk salesmen and windscreen washers, often followed by that fist-to-fist handshake where you twist your thumbs together.
But most scary were the chancers. A guy at a robot will generally be satisfied with two bucks. A Homeless Talk costs R4 a month, but certain moneygrubbers set their sights higher than that.
They’re the types you only see once in your life. Not for them the reliable routine of a patch on the corner of Rivonia and Grayston. These loons roam Jo’burg ceaselessly, scamming the innocent, the soft-hearted and the open-faced with their transparent lies and shameless fabrications.
Like the sunburnt lunatic wearing a beanie whom Russel had once encountered in the parking lot behind the Market Theatre. He’d come up to him bearing a clipboard and a pen.
“Name?” he’d asked, the minute Russel had finished parking his car. “Mmm. How do you spell that? Okay, now please fill in your address.”
Before he knew it, Russel had complied.
“Thank you. How much will you be donating?”
The next thing you know, he’d given the guy ten bucks – and told him where he lived. And he wasn’t even the car guard!
Another time an Indian-looking woman had accosted him in the Grayston Shopping Centre parking lot.
“Hi there. Sorry. Are you in too much of a hurry? No? I’ve just finished my aromatherapy diploma and I’m busy collecting money to start a website so I can open my own business. If you could help with a hundred rand, fifty rand... Or even just twenty rand…”
He’d been half looking over his shoulder at her with his open face, on the way to the video shop. It just seemed easier to give her the bucks than argue the pointlessness of aromatherapy websites. Also, there’d been a swarthy-looking boyfriend type leaning against his car right next to the lady, monitoring her progress.
These people were mad. It was worth twenty bucks to avoid getting into conversation with them. You never knew what they might be capable of.
But the craziest conversation Russel’s approachable demeanour ever got him into was at the Killarney Mall on a Saturday afternoon, just before the five o’clock movie.
A teenage guy had come up to him just outside Woolworths carrying a cardboard egg box.
“Hi there, I’m a student. Are you a student perhaps? No? You know how all the varsities have initiation? Well I’m going through initiation at the moment, so if you give me five rand, I’ll let you break this egg on my head.”
He had only two eggs in his egg box and showed no signs of anyone else having accepted his offer.
Russel so knew he had to get away from this person.
“It’s to raise money for my hostel’s rugby tour,” the lunatic continued. This in mid-November! On the periphery of Russel’s vision was a girl, possibly a sidekick, with another egg box.
He had frantically fished out R4,35 in change from his jeans pocket and retreated into Woollies as if on a highly important mission.
When he emerged ten minutes later with a bag of pork crackling-flavoured crisps, the hustlers were gone, and he was able to make his way to the Killarney Nu Metro unmolested.
As luck would have it, he came up three rand short for his popcorn and a Coke. He had to bum a few bucks off the couple behind him in the queue. They both looked at him a little funny.
The kind of romance that’s good for the company
It started off innocently enough, as just a group of colleagues going for after-work drinks. Then it was just the two of them going for drinks. Gift and Simone.
He was into the music scene and she’s the kind of arty girl who gets invited to all the best exhibition openings. So it was fun to introduce each other to their respective jols.
Then the one night after the record company showcase, they had a little thing.
They were both a little tipsy that time, so they sort of ignored it, and it didn’t affect the atmosphere in the office too much.
But a week later they had another thing, then another, and then it became clear to them that they were having a fully fledged office romance.
Relations in the workplace became a little awkward; no one else on the Freeflight staff knew about their affair and they saw no need to give the game away immediately.
Workplace liaisons had fallen out of favour since Freeflight’s short-lived last appointment, some guy who had thrown himself into wooing Simone at his first office party. The dude had ended up setting his pubes on fire in a fit of drunken besottedness.
These two lovebirds shared subtle caresses and clandestine kisses on the stairwell, then periods of basically ignoring each other as they overcorrected in trying to keep up professional appearances.
They did remarkably well in keeping their relationship a secret from all of their colleagues for a full two months before matters came to a head.
What brought the whole house of cards tumbling down was the annual Advertising Charity Fund Bowling Night.
The event is one of several social highlights of the advertising industry’s year, besides being a party of renown and notorious for being the genesis of several boozy office flings.
It would have been the perfect event for Gift and Simone to come out. Except then Gavin, the big-boss MD of Freeflight goes and invites Simone to Charity Bowling as his date.
Simone said she’d check what she was up to and then get back to him.
“What should I tell him,” she immediately confided in Gift. “If I tell him I’m going out with you, there’ll be a huge jealousy thing in the office. You know how crazy he can be!”
“And if I go with him, he’ll start thinking I like him and he’ll probably keep asking me out. And he’s really not my type.”
Good oke that he was, Gavin was a shaven-headed, tattooed weekend biker, and developing a boep.
“I don’t know,” Gift hesitated, suddenly seeing his advertising career on the verge of disaster thanks to his unchecked libido. “I can’t tell you what to do. You’ve gotta make up your own mind.”
“Hmmpf,” thought Simone to herself. Gift was all keen to have her as his skelm, but when it came time to own up he was suddenly all coy! She would certainly make up her own mind about who to take to Charity Bowling.
And so the appointed evening arrived. It had became clear to both Gift and Gavin that she was not going with either of them. Probably all for the best, they’d told themselves. These office romances only end up causing trouble.
Still, Simone is the most beautiful woman you’ve ever seen. A Bohemian, blue-eyed beauty with tumbling blonde curls, a mischievous smile and a taste in clothing straight out of the Melville thrift shops.
Anyway, bowling night arrives. And Gav and Gift end up going as each other’s partners. Not in a gay way, just to have someone you know to go with.
So there they are, sitting at the bar at the Brightwater Common bowling alley. The whole ad industry is there and things are just starting to warm up. A couple of tequilas have been quaffed and the first naughty nods towards the toilet have been shared.
And then Simone walks in. Looking like Fergie out of the Black Eyed Peas in a shiny, skintight pair of scarlet pants, and a plunging handkerchief top… and Ryk Neethling on her arm!
Gavin nearly drops his Red Bull and vodka. Gift bites his lip so hard it stings. In fact heads turn all over the bowling alley. “Who’s that with Ryk Neethling?” “Simone from Freeflight!”
Sheess.
They’re the undisputed stars of the evening – the celeb-mag photographer can’t get enough. Meanwhile Gift and Gav sit anonymously by the bowling-shoe booth.
“They look quite good together,” grimaces Gift through his whisky.
“Ja,” says Gav. “Hope it works out for them. Be good for the company.”
He was into the music scene and she’s the kind of arty girl who gets invited to all the best exhibition openings. So it was fun to introduce each other to their respective jols.
Then the one night after the record company showcase, they had a little thing.
They were both a little tipsy that time, so they sort of ignored it, and it didn’t affect the atmosphere in the office too much.
But a week later they had another thing, then another, and then it became clear to them that they were having a fully fledged office romance.
Relations in the workplace became a little awkward; no one else on the Freeflight staff knew about their affair and they saw no need to give the game away immediately.
Workplace liaisons had fallen out of favour since Freeflight’s short-lived last appointment, some guy who had thrown himself into wooing Simone at his first office party. The dude had ended up setting his pubes on fire in a fit of drunken besottedness.
These two lovebirds shared subtle caresses and clandestine kisses on the stairwell, then periods of basically ignoring each other as they overcorrected in trying to keep up professional appearances.
They did remarkably well in keeping their relationship a secret from all of their colleagues for a full two months before matters came to a head.
What brought the whole house of cards tumbling down was the annual Advertising Charity Fund Bowling Night.
The event is one of several social highlights of the advertising industry’s year, besides being a party of renown and notorious for being the genesis of several boozy office flings.
It would have been the perfect event for Gift and Simone to come out. Except then Gavin, the big-boss MD of Freeflight goes and invites Simone to Charity Bowling as his date.
Simone said she’d check what she was up to and then get back to him.
“What should I tell him,” she immediately confided in Gift. “If I tell him I’m going out with you, there’ll be a huge jealousy thing in the office. You know how crazy he can be!”
“And if I go with him, he’ll start thinking I like him and he’ll probably keep asking me out. And he’s really not my type.”
Good oke that he was, Gavin was a shaven-headed, tattooed weekend biker, and developing a boep.
“I don’t know,” Gift hesitated, suddenly seeing his advertising career on the verge of disaster thanks to his unchecked libido. “I can’t tell you what to do. You’ve gotta make up your own mind.”
“Hmmpf,” thought Simone to herself. Gift was all keen to have her as his skelm, but when it came time to own up he was suddenly all coy! She would certainly make up her own mind about who to take to Charity Bowling.
And so the appointed evening arrived. It had became clear to both Gift and Gavin that she was not going with either of them. Probably all for the best, they’d told themselves. These office romances only end up causing trouble.
Still, Simone is the most beautiful woman you’ve ever seen. A Bohemian, blue-eyed beauty with tumbling blonde curls, a mischievous smile and a taste in clothing straight out of the Melville thrift shops.
Anyway, bowling night arrives. And Gav and Gift end up going as each other’s partners. Not in a gay way, just to have someone you know to go with.
So there they are, sitting at the bar at the Brightwater Common bowling alley. The whole ad industry is there and things are just starting to warm up. A couple of tequilas have been quaffed and the first naughty nods towards the toilet have been shared.
And then Simone walks in. Looking like Fergie out of the Black Eyed Peas in a shiny, skintight pair of scarlet pants, and a plunging handkerchief top… and Ryk Neethling on her arm!
Gavin nearly drops his Red Bull and vodka. Gift bites his lip so hard it stings. In fact heads turn all over the bowling alley. “Who’s that with Ryk Neethling?” “Simone from Freeflight!”
Sheess.
They’re the undisputed stars of the evening – the celeb-mag photographer can’t get enough. Meanwhile Gift and Gav sit anonymously by the bowling-shoe booth.
“They look quite good together,” grimaces Gift through his whisky.
“Ja,” says Gav. “Hope it works out for them. Be good for the company.”
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