Faith and redemption at Melville Second Hand

The sound of children woke Theo from his slumber on his folded-back driver’s seat in the notorious Meldene parking lot, around the corner from the Oh! gay bar, where he had spent the bulk of the previous night.
His last lucid memory was of launching into a series of tequilas with a cute ad executive from some fashion magazine. It must have been a long series, because he could still smell them.
At least he’d had the presence of mind to sleep in the car, rather than play with people’s lives by trying to drive home in a tequila-stained muscle shirt and, he was embarrassed to admit, running eye make-up.
He looked in the rear-view mirror. Yip. There it was. Two black streaks of kohl down his cheeks like he’d been crying bitumen. Clearly he’d not got lucky last night.
If only he’d remembered to leave a window ajar he might not smell quite so bad this morning. Grief, his car smelt like a stable! A stable in which someone had installed a tequila still.
Oh well.
Noon on Saturday. Mothers with three children in tow dragged their squeaking progeny down the road towards the Melville Boulevard centre. Taxis hooted, car guards whistled that distinctive Zola whistle and the smell of pap drifted into the car through some mysterious conduit. Certainly not through an opened window.
Then it hit him. Grief! Today was the day of Gay Pride!
Only the highlight of the entire gay calendar! Only the must-attend event of the year, the most fabulous street parade imaginable and the first one set to end at Heartlands, the new, revamped gay district in downtown Braamfontein.
If ever there was a time to go to Gay Pride this was it. Guys had been planning their outfits for weeks. It was going to absolutely flawless!
But here he sat, completely drenched in tequila, no outfit planned and the shops closing in less than an hour. And the parade was starting at 3pm – from the Constitutional Court on the other side of town.
Feeling terrible, Theo removed the electric razor he kept in the cubby hole and began shaving. That always made him feel better. As he was doing his neck he stared absent-mindedly through the windscreen and his eyes came rest on a large sign emblazoned on the wall in front of him: Melville Second Hand Clothing. If you don’t want it, somebody else does!”
At that point the shaver’s battery went flat. Great. He’d be going on the Pride parade with stubble. At least most of his neck was done. And as for the shopping, there was no time to do it any other way. He would be buying his Gay Pride outfit at Melville Second Hand Clothing.
He wearily got out of the car and donned his sunglasses. His hangover hit him with renewed force, complete with a special, piercing headache centred right between his eyes.
Ghastly. And the biggest party of the year starting in three hours. If ever there was a day for a couple of Red Bulls. This was it. But first, a bit of shopping.
As he entered the second-hand shop, Theo could see he was on a hiding to nothing. This wasn’t one of those fabulous costume shops, Melville Second Hand was essentially a pawn shop. Literally the kind of place you sold your unwanted possessions and sad old clothes when you needed money. The last stop of Melville’s drug addicts before they gave up and went into rehab. There was even a dusty acoustic guitar in a corner, nestling forlornly near some golf clubs.
Suits, overalls, a thousand pairs of tatty jeans, sad, peeling leather jackets… it wasn’t an inspiring selection. If he was going to make it to the gay parade, he would have to think laterally. Then he stumbled across a pile of Eighties pop records in a dusty corner and he had an idea…
This might not be a total loss after all. Stubble, this white T-shirt over here, these torn jeans… He went through the jacket rail and found just the right black leather biker jacket…
As luck would have it, Theo’s steel-rimmed sunglasses were of the very same design that was the height of fashion in the mid-Eighties…
He donned his ensemble, slung the guitar over his shoulder and evaluated the look in the mirror. Spot on.
Theo was George Michael from the 1985 video for Faith.