Sometimes I’m a total drama queen. And like fellow drama
queen Kanye West I bring it on myself!
As the
low-rent Yeezy, I am able to sense drama opportunities approaching and optimize
them for maximum dramatic impact.
For
instance, if I am running low on petrol, I will avoid filling up until my fuel
gauge runs deep into reserve and beyond.
That
situation adds so much spice to life. Every car trip becomes fraught with
increasing risk, with danger, even. A trip to Maboneng, at night, with the gauge
on reserve is suddenly a super-hectic stress mission. The very atmosphere
begins to crackle with tension. And say now you do run out of fuel, well that’s the beginning of a whole new
adventure, a whole new drama.
Sometimes
it does get a bit ridiculous, though.
Like I’ve
got this radio show on this digital station called EuroTrashMusic. I love my
radio show. I love the freedom of expression and the utter lack of a playlist. I
love it being live, without a safety net. And I love the discipline of having
to be at the station at 4pm. It creates the illusion of a proper job.
So on
afternoon I’m merrily cruising down to EuroTrash for my show, fuel gauge on the
customary red, frisson of drama and tension in the air like farts, when the car
coughs once, loses power and quits in the middle of the M1 South.
It’s 26 minutes till my show
starts. Drama time!
I’m roughly two kays from the
nearest petrol station – I’ve got to run. Also, I have my laptop with me to do
the show off, and I don’t want to leave that thing unattended in my car, so
I’ve got to bring it with me.
So
commences a desperate, hell-for-leather plunge through the streets of Oaklands
to that Shell there by the previous offramp. And you must understand, I’m going
at full pace.
An obliging petrol attendant
gives me a used five-litre canister for strawberry Slush Puppy flavouring, we
fill that thing and I stagger those two kays back to my car, laptop over one
shoulder and canister leaking pink petrol all over me in the other hand.
With a kay left
to go, I start feeling the effects of extreme exertion. I haven’t felt this
shattered since I hit that cramp halfway up Inchanga in the Comrades. I’m still
wearing my jersey, so I’m now overheating something terrible. I’m the exact colour of a 93-octane Slush Puppy, let
alone smelling like one.
It’s a
twisted, magenta, fully-clothed Crossfit challenge. My phone is vibrating in my
pocket like some lady’s massager, no doubt the station manager wondering where
the hell I am. I’m giving these Fidel Castro wheezes and my face is now a
violent purple, oozing sweat like Big Show’s leotard.
It’s nine minutes
to showtime when I collapse into the side of my car and start pouring petties
all over the side of it, fiddling with the fuel inlet and crying with
desperation. Three missed calls so far.
I make it
to the station with seconds to spare, dive behind the desk and start my show
shrieking and coughing while something pops alarmingly in my left lung.
The video webcast
of Hagen’s House featured a bright pink person who’d either had a pulmonary
embolism or just been in a fight and then had a bucket of brake fluid poured
all over him.
Being in
that sealed studio on a warm spring day was like being inside the petrol tank
of a Bangladeshi ferry. The main dramatic element of the show was my cough
deteriorating into petrochemical pleurisy, to the strains of Machine Head and
the Stooges.
For the
pink Kanye West of Braamfontein, it was about enough drama for one day.
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