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.