Butch Varnes gets his big break in soapies

Since the demise of Wiaan Nortje as main bad guy on Metropole, SA’s fourth most-watched soapie, things had been up in the air.
After a series of drug and alcohol problems and a couple of no-shows, he had improbably hit the jackpot at Gold Reef City and promptly resigned.
Since then the show had been drifting.
Viewers need someone to hate. And you can’t retread a goodie as a baddie, they won’t buy that. The show needed a proper, card-carrying, scary, malevolent presence to put the fear of God into the fans.
Hence this morning’s auditions. The Metropole producers were looking for the evilest person in South Africa.
And Butch Varnes, 106kg personal trainer and recent Shakespeare convert meant to get that role. This time wasn’t going to end like his last audition, when he’d been tricked into leaving the ad agency premises in a green thong.
This time he’d been bench pressing a hundred just before he came, and he got into a shoving match with a mime in the car park on purpose. Just to get into character.
Yesterday he bribed a security guard at a parking lot in Sandton.
He was feeling well evil today.
In fact, his mood probably matched the looming threat the Metropole casting agents were looking for better than any of the other candidates. His gym client and prospective colleague Gillian Bogle had schooled him well: “You must be insane,” she’d said. “But you mustn’t realise you’re insane.”
What made it difficult for Butch was his decision to partake of the hottest substance known to supermarket cuisine before entering the audition room. His impulse purchase of Tabasco red with his usual lunchtime Yogi Sip looked like being his undoing.
The idea was to down a savage, half-bottle shot of Tabasco before entering the audition chamber, in order to get his bile up and generate a blazing storm of anger behind his normally docile eyes.
“I’m too dumb-looking,” Butch had complained to Gillian earlier.
As planned, he had whipped the bottle from his pocket as he walked up the passage toward the office at Afterglow Productions, where he would meet with Destiny.
He’d taken an almighty swig from the bottle as he paused outside the doorway, then popped it back in his pocket and strode into the performance space, script at the ready, oozing pure evil.
Unfortunately, he had not replaced the tiny Tabasco cap properly. So Butch’s vitriolic, seething reading was accompanied by the sensation of red pepper sauce oozing from the pocket of his workout pants into his crotch area.
“Jane, if you so much as move from that seat,” he growled a little way through. “I take no responsibility for the consequences.” After that, Butch just couldn’t help himself. He dropped his script, grabbed his crotch and squeezed. Hard.
He was in blazing agony. But he refused to break down. He grabbed his crotch harder and stared the casting director down as his face turned purple and he broke out into a sweat.
She seemed startled. In fact, she reeled back in her chair.
“I take no responsibility… for the consequences,” Butch repeated and advanced on the poor woman, walking being the only way he could think of to alleviate the fire in his nether regions.
His hand left his crotch momentarily to wipe the sweat out of his eyes and, oh no! He had Tabasco on the surface of his right eyeball!
By this time he was right at the poor woman’s table, tears streaming down his face. Splashing onto her script.
Through the tears, he caught sight of his next line, upside down.
“Baby. Baby! Don’t go out tonight. I won’t have it. If you only knew what that does to me!”
“Oh,” Butch sobbed. He could take it no longer. He threw his arms around the casting director and wailed like child. He squeezed her perhaps a bit too tightly, for she gasped a little.
He was an enormous, strong man, hugging her tightly and sobbing wildly, like anything could happen. It was a rather terrifying situation.
But Nkosinathi Nkayi, for that was the casting director’s name, Nkosinathi Nkayi found herself patting Butch Varnes’s enormous back and consoling him.
She sniffed back a tear of her own, shushed his terrified, sobs and assured him, “okay my baby. Okay. I promise. I won’t go out tonight.”
Even though that’s not what it said on the script at all.