Home of the blessed

They’ve been letters from home, but not stayed the same. Then they became letters for
home. Home of Garth Wright, Springbok of legend, who scored that runaway try down
the grandstand touchline at the Boet in the Currie Cup semifinal.

Home of Athol Fugard, the bard of the Bay, who knew our people, spoke as we
do and told our stories. Told human stories with courage, touched the world, inspired,
revealed. We helped him tell it through us. He helped us know our selves.
Here in the home of the underachievers, the launching point of champions,
breeding ground of quality people for export. Of quiet heroes, shy champions. Gavin
Cowley, Peter Pote, Keith Butler Wheelhouse, Anton Calitz, the tortured, guitar-wielding
wordsmith on his one-man crusade for self-expression.

Turtle Morris, Richard Rath, Vincent Barnes, Mush Hide… the watermen who
passed down the wisdom from the days when there was still a wall at the Pipe, when you
could play sticks at the Summies Hotel, even before you could get pissed at Lillies and
laid on the bowling green behind Faces, while the ballies queued round the corner for
Irish coffees at Angelo’s and you had to have a meal to drink on a Sunday, at El Cid, at
the Ranch, Blackbeard’s Tavern, The Bell, De Kelder. You had to tuck in your shirt to jol
at Cassidy’s, Daytoga’s was illegal and you queued your arse off if you weren’t mates
with big Gord at Indigo’s.

Here in the home of big, mellow, Joe van der Linden, Gino Fabbri, Steve Schultz,
Worm, Wang and the ones that made it. Made it out, made it back, made it big. Black
Coffee live tonight at Pizza Palace, Sticky Fingers at the Festival. “If you enjoyed
yourself, my name is Craig Mischief. If you had a kak time, my name is Barry Hilton.”
Things to see and things to do. Places to go, minds to blow. But just not so often,
you know? Paul Simon at St Georges, Indecent Obsession at the Westbourne Oval in
the rain while Kiss Me was number one for 27 weeks. Van Coke at Pool City, Nude
Girls at Einsteins, Napalm Death at the Dungeon, Kerkorrel at the Tech. With Gary
Hemmings, impresario of Bar None festivals. Centrestage when it was still at the harbour.
The harbour when you could go raving there. When you could still go raving, when
Munro, Shane, Vimo, Karmi and them played till 8am and we stopped jolling at Cadillac
Jacks and only went to Barneys on a Sunday afternoon for a draught or two or three and
to bump into Bruce and Colleen and to stay for a last one even though we had a 4pm
subbing shift at the Herald with Bobby Cheetham on the night desk and Bob Kernohan
chief-subbing and Sue Ramsay copy tasting and a Mike Holmes pic for the front page
and Rick Wilson said we’d lead with the Cape Town pipe bomb and Fredlin and Deon
were meeting us at the R-Bar when we got off shift and the Red Bull girls were doing a
promo and it was good and we were going to the Shine-I later. And then maybe watch the
sun come up on the couch on the pavement outside Jules and Mia’s house there by Peas
and Carrots.

Home of the brave, home of the hesitant, home of the beautiful that don’t know it
yet. Barbara Robertson making sure they find out. Nicole Marais, Jane Simpson, Lauren
Harper, Taryn Miller, Kim Danoher, Danelle Bhana, Reeva Steenkamp, Zipho
Zokhufa… at the Feather Market Centre in the same suit you went to court in, with
Mandela Mazibuko saying, “Thanks for the support,“ to the well-wishers as we get set
for our winning weekend in Sun City, or the Fish, or Plett or The Halyards, or just a day at Seals with no wind and the beginning of a west swell and Duncan Scott in the water
doing head-dips at the outside peak on the low tide, while Big Red checks the waves
before work and Brad and Darren tune up in the parking lot for an acoustic set at
Legends, while Gerry van Wyk plays the ladies’ bar of the Cape St Francis hotel, where
Thulani was the king, when he wasn’t playing the Skyroof, or was it the Room at the
Top, or was it the Markham, when there was a passage through to the Herald so the
reporters could squeeze in a extra dop during supper break, till they moved to the
Maritime, where Dave Goldblum played Say Africa at the Four Winds Folk Club while
Gavin Weeks unloaded the amp from his boot outside Tico’s and Gerard had just moved
back from Cape Town, but Matt was on his way there. With Karen and Toni and Trent
and Tani and Gary and Meegs and Smiles and Bean and all the ous, if they didn’t go
further, Joburg and London and LA and Adelaide, where Craig Pottie still gets a wave,
but it still says there on the second line of his Facebook profile, “From Port Elizabeth,
Eastern Cape”.
Home of the blessed, the fortunate, the friendly, the real, the cheap, the priceless,
the not too big, the not too small, the real right regular know-it-alls. When all’s been said
and done it’s the one place we all look back on. It’s where we’re from. Where we did all
the things we’ve done. Where we’re remembered when we’re gone.

The shit in Zanzibar

The shit oozes down the walls of the toilet stall. Just to my right,
one globule. If I watch it, it stops, but as I turn my attention back
to the ganja in my lap, it resumes its journey. Like a snail, a black
snail of filthy, dysenteric bowelspawn, shat there like his brothers,
his fellows, by some festering, infected human.

The fuckin’ shit is everywhere, to my left, to my right, on the door,
the cistern. There are diarrhea tracks running down the window. I’m
sitting on shit, anything I touch will be covered, suffused in shit.
The guy must have shat like a sawn-off shotgun blast. Probably that
fuck from the East Rand. He was white as a blank page at dinner this
evening.
More seafood. Crayfish the size of tennis rackets,
lobster like vacuum cleaners, just about disembowelled, some black
brain fluid still visible in the cranial cavity. I can actually
discern the texture of shellfish flesh in the nugget of faeces that
rests on this toilet roll. Caramelised, swallowed and defecated out,
before the Zanzibari waiters have even had time to clear the table.

I must roll these spliffs quick and careful. The ganja
will absorb the stench. So will I. I will emerge from this filthy
fucking shithole reeking of someone else’s bodge. And I will NEED a
fuckin’ smoke after that.

A smoke of this easy-choefing Zanzibari grunge. Ten rand
a stick. All brown paper wrapping like we used to score at the Bunny
Hut in St Francis when the Chokka Run was just starting. Sticks,
fingers.

It's me and Duncan by the palm tree just beyond the
splash of the security light, the guard waiting politely just out of
range. And the mert, the same guy who sold me the stuff, tugging at my
elbow. Blue Face.

“You cheat me. You say hundred rand is ten euro. They
only give me seven. You cheat me. Give me more. I curse you! You hear
me, South Africa? I curse you! I curse your Mandela. I curse
bafanabafana! I curse Big Brodda! Curse Waka Waka!

The weed does taste of shit. Shit and seafood. Seafood
and suntan lotion. Sunblock and insect killer. Spice. Cardamom,
cinnamon, ginger, cloves. Vanilla, saffron, nutmeg, bhangi, all of
which have shared space in my day bag on those trips to Stonetown.
Stonetown. Stonetown! Stoned town! Full of Blue Face's sticky, evil
cursed weed, honing of someone else's shit festering down the concrete
alleys, hopping the sewage.

"Nice saris. I give you good price. Come! Zanzaibar football shirt.
How much you give me?"

No bru, I'm just... I'm high as a kite and I'm cursed. And there's a
mullah in every doorway checking me out. I can't find the sun. I can't
find my way. Every alley seems the same. The sea was supposed to be
this way, but it's not, got it's so fuckin hot. Daranjani fish market
fuck I could kotch. These flies... In the bogs at Mercury's a woman
weeps. I heard her through the wall.

The fever's feeling me too, but the ganja keeps it at bay, even if it
lets the demons in. We're being led to god knows where by no one knows
who. He says he's Black Elvis, but that sounds like a pseudonym, not
him, I don't trust these alleys.

This ready-rolled... I know the ou put a hex on it. I could just... If
these Muslim ous would stop staring, I could just... As long as Black
Elvis isn't out to fuckin'...

Somewhere here there's somewhere kief. I been here, somewhere behind
an ancient door of woodworked finery wifh inlaid brass and farsi
prayers, there's a balcony and a view and a fan and a draught and a
waiter in an off-white fez. What was it called? If I could just... Is
that me that smells of zol? Where's he taking us? I didn't mean to
rip-off Blue Face. I didn't mean to be an outlaw. I thought... How
much is a rand worth anyway? No one knows that shit. If he's cursed me
and I get stabbed, I'll be fuckin acid!

Tripping in this fuckin heat. The sweat's bringing the shit back. I
can smell that oke's skiets and my own sweat and the devil's ganja on
the sub-basement of these waves of cinnamon from those baseball-bat
sized sticks as Black Elvis rounds his last corner and kids tell
kitendawili riddles, while shangaa-adorned brides-to-be undergo
unyango ceremonies, new plans are laid for the busara festival,
somewhere west of Nungwe a fisherman adjusts his sail and the ancient
rhythm of the elements ushers him home and I, I am the one out of
place. I am the cursed one. I am the bringer of the curse; the source,
not the subject. Head spinning, mind twisted, self-obsessed, smelling
of shit, my very body rebelling against this place as I rise to the
skin like a bullet to the sternum fit to burst, my week is up it's
time to bust. I'm not qualified to stay, I only scratch the surface,
my passive aggrression's only fit for cities not this place of
ancients where we all know our place. I can only impose my schizo flow
for so long before it's all gone. I know when I see Blue Face's
cursing face before my face in every alley face it's time to face up
to facts and fade out of Stonetown but I don't even know the
wherewithal. This place's a maze!

Zanzibar will bring me to a pus-faced head and squeeze me out like so
much infected matter, like a foreign object.

And that's what I am. That scrubby, peppery ganja i scammed off Blue
Face... The paranoid squalour, the sewage lapping our feet as we
stumble through these alleys to our doom or salvation. The dysenteric,
flatulent sheetflow of shit spray-painted up and down the walls of
every tourist toilet on Unguja. From jambiani, where barmen tanned the
tone of teak tap the tonsils of pale new blood fresh off the bus.
None of that is real thing. The arrogant, narcissistic self-centered
ignorance that guides me, the hedonistic filter through which me and
my travel mates view this place, as we get our hair cornrowed on the
beach, 13 serengetis in, ready-rolled blazing in the lady's eyes,
board shorts soiled with last night's follow-through. A 12-hour badge
at the bar, A willing market for all that's tacky in their culture,
the economic incentive for total debasement. Bead bracelets, cow horn
necklaces, kente kaftans, a plywood map of Africa with Kilimanjaro on
it, an ebony club encrusted in glass beads, a leather ankle strap,
tied by a Maasai tribesman at the resort variety show, a set of
elephant-shaped bookends haggled down to forty thousand shillings at
the hotel craft market from a man who knows a man who can get us some
bhang. Cheap. And what Mr Tourist wants, Mr Tourist gets, cheap &
cheerful if a little sarcastic but still.

Ja fuck. I am the shit in Zanzibar.

Ploughing through, grimly clung, for what?

There was a certain amount of pressure.

My parents had both grown up poor. And they’d made good, risen above their circumstances to make a magnificent life for my sister and I in Port Elizabeth.

So good that, by the time we were in our early teens, they were able to build a holiday house on the canals in St Francis Bay, so we would be able to have the privileged upbringing they could not.

We would frolic joyously in the summer gorgeousness, play tennisette on the sand, surf like the Beach Boys and waterski like champs. That was the plan.

To this purpose, the minute we moved to our new house, we attended an auction, where my father purchased one speedboat, one set of waterskis and a lifejacket.

He also bought himself a captain’s hat resembling that of Kaptein Stubing from Die Plesierboot. So he was always going to be driving the boat. But who was going to be doing the waterskiing?

My sister was more into beach braais, boys and socialising. My mom wanted nothing more than a round of golf and a tan. So me, I was the waterskiier.

And I was the guy who found himself, late that summer afternoon, neck deep in riverweeds, on the rocky north bank of the Krom river, clinging to a ski-rope.

By that stage, we’d failed seven times. My 14-year-old arms were battling with the strain of trying and failing to pull myself out of the water. Neither my dad Fred, nor I, had ever been waterskiing before.

The sun was low in the sky, so all I could see was these massive fields of glare off the water. The wind was up, and the chop was ankle high. We’d drifted onto the rocks and crunched two propeller blades, so Fred was in a towering, sweary rage.

We tried again. Fred floored the gearshift and the bow lurched skyward against the glare, tombstoning in the chop. I ploughed through, grimly clung to the rope, submarining, half-standing, till my fingers couldn’t any more and I had to let go. I sank miserably into the green, bathwater murk of the Krom. The wind blew Fred’s curses past me as he circled again.

“Try again. I go a bit steadier this time,” he shouted as I grabbed for the rope. We were drifting into the rocks again. The lifejacket was riding up to my ears and chafing me. The sun was orange now, and half down. We’d need the last of the fuel to get home.

This would have to be the last try.

I floated in the riverine debris, some responsibility I couldn’t quite place, heavy on my scrawny shoulders. Fred eased forward and took up the slack.

I was still battling to align my skis when he floored it.

Then I was dry! The wind in my hair! The view! I was up. I was up! I was waterskiing. My dad looked back and saw. And I saw he was proud of me.

Like with many successes, I couldn’t work out what I’d done right. But together we rode the chop, up the Krom river, him in his speedboat and me waterskiing. Me and my dad.

The running shoe rubbish bin incident

Coming down to Cape Town for a conference, sometimes I'm blessed with a day-before flight. This is a welcome change from the usual, which is a 4am wake-up followed by a groggy scramble to make it onto a 6am flight to the meeting.
So this time I get to fly down the day before. Ideal for an executive of my advancing years. Drop out of the clouds just after lunch, and Cape Town's your oyster for the afternoon.
I'm planning a pleasant bit of gym, followed by dinner at one of the city's finest restaurants. Urgent gym, though. I'm getting back into it I’ve been three days in a row and I don't want to slack off.
Luckily I've brought my gym gear. Lekker sta-dry exercise vest, the old running shorts and, er, bollocks! Forgot my running shoes.
But I'm so in the zone for this gym session. It's 3pm, just before the arvie rush, I'm gonna go to my old gym at the Point, and they've always got the kiefest modern machines.
No, I'm not missing out on this. I'monna buy myself some gym shoes at the Waterfront!
I park, then charge in there barefoot, in shorts and a T-shirt. Focused.
Ah, here it is. The Athlete's Foot. Perfect.
"I'm looking for some gym shoes that are cheap and effective," I tell the shop assistant. What about these."
"Those are ladies shoes. Come have a look at these..."
Pretty soon I'm sorted with a pair of Nike Airmax. Black, like I'm a singer in a hardcore band or something.
All good. And perfect timing to beat the rush still. I hurry back down to the parking garage only to find that I've... Have I? Aargh! I have. I've lost my parking ticket.
Jeez, I'm having a mare. The pay-machine tells me you pay R60 for lost cards. No ways I'm paying that. I must've left it in the Athlete's Foot!
Back there!
"Did you okes not find a parking ticket here where I was?"
"Ja, there was one. I just threw it in the bin."
Next thing we're in the bin. Well, the two shop guys are in there. Going through it like CSI.
I tell you what, the okes eat a lot of take-aways at Athlete's Foot.
"It's pay-day," the oke tunes me.
No parking tickets, though.
"You sure you didn't chuck it in the one in the back office?"
This one's got more of a pie vibe. King Pie, with chips and sauce, and a lot of Cokes. Okes go for the Coke Zero here. Health conscious guys.
Still no parking ticket. I've gotta call mercy:
"Okay guys! Please. You've done enough. Please stop digging in the bin."
I can't bring myself to actually help dig. I kinda watch over their shoulders. There's a Nando's with extra sauce wrapper in there. By contrast, KFC do a pretty neat line in litter.
It's almost four. On my way back to the parking garage, I meet a guy in a branded top. We negotiate a discount. Thirty bucks for the lost ticket.
By the time I get into the Point, my gym session has cost me eight hundred and eighty rand.
They better have bladdy kief machines is all I can say.

Is being offended so offensive?

I’m a columnist, so it’s hard not to feel some sympathy with a fellow traveller such as Kuli Roberts.

As you may know, she was recently fired as a columnist by Sunday World for a piece she wrote for the tabloid making derogatory statements about coloured people.

When the storm erupted around her column, I quickly looked it up online. Indeed, it was offensive, making a succession of insulting generalisations about coloured women.

Here’s the thing, though. I’d actually bought Sunday World that weekend – I do most weekends – and I hadn’t bothered to read Kuli’s piece.

Why? Because Bitches Brew is hard work. The premise of the column, as far as I could tell, was to disparage in turn every sector of South African society. It was bitchy to the max, offensive, striving to be funny, but seldom pulling it off.

It was meant to be provocative, and it succeeded. Read that column every week and you could not help but be offended.

Most of Kuli’s bile seemed to be aimed at black men for being philanders and not taking care of their kids. Black women also got stick, for settling for men who didn’t deserve them. Whites didn’t escape her ire – for being unrehabilitated racists, if I remember correctly. And so, eventually, coloured people’s turn came.

As always, the prose was blunt, racist stereotypes were trotted out – possibly to be satirized, but this didn’t come across at all.

And somewhere, the wrong person read that column.

For years, Bitches Brew had been going about its bitchy, nasty business on page 7 of Sunday World and readers had simply let it be. “Ag, it’s just Kuli,” they thought. “She’s being a bitch.”

But once someone had taken offence and drawn attention to the column and it was taken out of its context, it stood naked. When you don’t see it in context alongside the equally disturbing celebrity-dissing handed out by Shwashwi, or the regular, thinly sourced allegations of infidelity, fraud, pregnancy, drug use and bankruptcy in which this publication trades, then the piece becomes truly shocking.

But it was out of context.

Soon after the outcry erupted Sunday World editor Wally Mbhele announced the piece had shown “clear prejudice against a section of South African society” and the column would be discontinued.

I don’t believe he should have done that. Surely the point of the column was always to be provocative. It succeeded wholeheartedly. I found it uniformly offensive every time I read it.

But is it that wrong for someone to be offended? The column succeeded beyond its wildest dreams in stimulating debate. It shocked us out of our blissful denial and got us to confront the deep racism that still exists. And that is the sign of a successful column.

South Africans should be grown-up enough to respond coherently, with wit, to expose weak arguments and ignorant racism. Do we need to be protected from offence at every turn until we can no longer defend ourselves?

Sure, Kuli was offensive. But I think she wanted to be. Her satire was clumsy, though, and her attempt at comedy came across as a racist rant. She should have delivered a sincere apology and been allowed to continue.

Bacon, I think we were scared of you...

In the old days, before Lorraine Primary built the new section, the school was basically just a quad with classrooms running around it.

The kindergarten classes were in a wing running off the one side, and the headmaster’s office opposite that. So it was really like a big capital A. But if you write a A like the Germans do, with a square section at the top.

And we were in the corner where the right-hand ascender meets the crossbar. Standard One. Miss Jonker.

Break times, well, they happen in the quad, mos. In the netball court. Girls playing that game where they loop a length of pantihose around their legs, and the other girls jump over it. The boys play stingers.

Well, most of the boys. This one little kid didn’t play stingers. He wore his blazer buttoned up, even in the middle of summer. And he was a bit chubby, so we called him Bacon.

He just sat there on the benches, watching us. He must have been Sub B.

We were merciless. “Come on, Bacon. Why don’t you come play stingers? Are you scared? Bacon! Bacon! Why don’t you go play pantihose with the girls!”

Until he ran off and cried into Mrs Bruwer’s dress.

We were like assassins. Like torturers. Mass murderers, we were that cruel.

Bacon was new. Within weeks of his arrival, we’d been called in by Mr Van Rooyen and told to stop calling him Bacon. We didn’t. We smelt blood and we went in for the kill. We were like sharks circling our prey, there in the corner of the quad near the netball net, where Bacon used to sit, all by himself, in his blazer.

“Hey, Bacon! Are you coming to rugby practice after school? Or are you gonna play netball? Did you remember your netball skirt, Bacon? Hey Bacon?”

We were just stabbing him in the heart, this little boy who’d come from Sunridge, or Rowellan Park, or Kabega or wherever, without any friends. And we just broke him down.

Bacon didn’t come back for the second term.

And I know it was because of us. We broke him down and chased him away. We never even bothered to learn his name. It might’ve been Grant, but it probably wasn’t. We were such little arseholes.

And perhaps we were afraid of him. We’d never seen individuality before. Never seen anyone resist the peer pressure to conform and go along with the group. So we looked at him, found something distinctive and picked at it until we chased him away.

I just hope it didn’t last.

I hope moved to Charlo, and it was a hundred times better and he made lots of friends and he grew up well adjusted and happy.

And most of all, I’d like to say sorry to you, sir, the boy we called Bacon. I apologise. We didn’t know how much we’d hurt you. But rest assured, we got our turn later in life, and we learnt our lesson.

Crumbs, man, Bacon. You’ve haunted me all my life.

Settle-down time for the people of the South

The South is a strange place to most people, but if you come from there, it’s like home. Not, like Rosettenville, more Oakdene, Bassonia. Me and my mates all still stay there. We grew up together, and we still there.

There’s houses in Glen Vista that are about R900 000 for a two-bedroom townhouse. That’s not cheap, hey. It’s the same as Bedfordview, boet.

But we all still there. We can just call each other up and braai. It’s not like the one oke’s staying Honeydew and the other guy’s in Illovo or whatever. We all still there where we went to school. I’m renting a place in Mondeor… It’s lekker in the South. It’s probably a bit like the Eastern Cape. Okes are genuine, you know what I mean?

We all used to play roller-hockey together. There in the parking lot of The Glen shopping centre. And we still all staying there near each other.

It’s just… Yussie, that commute’s killing me. You know, boet, I leave at seven on the dot to get here by nine. And if I’m five minutes late, you can add another half hour to that. Two and a half hours, boet! Just to get to Sandton!

It’s a joke, man.

But I’m 26 now and I always said I wanna have lighties before I’m thirty. It’d be lekker to be able to play with my lighties. Even my grandkids. My one mate’s grandpa even comes and plays seven-a-side football with us sometimes. It’s lekker, that. The guy’s in his sixties, but he can play football with his grandson.

I’ve just gotta propose some time this year. Then we got two years to hang out, and we can have kids before I’m thirty.

She’s just started working here in Sandton, so I’m waiting for her to crack. I’m saying nothing. It’s been three weeks so far, but I can check she’s getting moeg. That commute’s starting to get to her. Two hours to Sandton. Two hours back. I’m just waiting for her to suggest that we buy a place here in the north.

And then it’s on. We get a place in, like, Parkmore. Have you checked that place? It’s not so steep. It’s about a mil and a half for a three-bed place. And close to Sandton, boet. Five minutes!

I’ve always said, I must have my own house when I get married. You know what I mean? You can’t bring your wife home to a rented flat. I scheme by the time we got a place here in Sandton, I’ll propose.

Kim, Her name’s Kim. Also from the South. I’m a proper South boytjie, boet. But it’s time for a oke to get serious now. You know what I mean?

It’s time to settle down now.

Scammed! Or maybe not! It was kinda hard to tell…

“I’m sorry. It seems you gave me four hundred and ten rand instead of five hundred.”

And the waiter proffers the five notes we ostensibly given him a minute ago. Or did we? It’s five past one in the morning, we’ve been out since about 8pm, when we left for the Greek restaurant.

I had the peri-peri spatchcock chicken, as I do. And the Stella Artois draught. One of the few places that do it. And they do a perfectly serviceably cheesecake. And a cappuccino that skriks for min, which gives you the urge to stick around for perhaps one more of those Stellas.

Flushed with the joie de vivre and camaraderie of a successful dinner, we stroll out of the Greek and find we’re still in the mood for socialising. As luck would have it, there’s a restaurant right next door. There was a function on earlier, but it seems to be over.

Do they have room for us? Indeed they do…

After a couple of beers, you feel like moving on to whiskies. Shoo! Expensive whiskies! Four-twenty bucks for a couple of rounds? Well, there are four of us, and we did have two rounds, so maybe it’s possible.

I paid with a card downstairs, so I’ve still got cash on me. Five hundred. Hey, what the hell, keep the change. We’re feeling prodigal tonight.

And now this! I didn’t give him five hundred, I gave him four-ten! He expects me to believe I mistook a R10 note for a R100. As if I would! In this orange light!

I mean, it’s possible, but I honestly don’t think I did. Still, there’s no way to prove it. I hand over another hundie.

“There you go. One hundred rand note,” I tell him sarcastically. “Please bring me my change.”

Still unsure whether I’ve been scammed or not, I’m not sure what to tip him. The original eighty I was gonna give him? Or a token twenty? If he isn’t ripping me, then that would be rude, but if he is ripping me, he gets a wicked R100 on a R410 bill.

I’m getting a maths headache just thinking about it. And I feel scammed, whether I have been or not! Plus, they served us whisky that tasted like dishwater.

So far, so mundane. Man gets a bit pissed, gets his sums wrong at a bar. But then! A week later, the same thing happens to my wife’s mate at another restaurant. Sorry, you gave me the wrong notes. Look, two hundreds and a ten. You owe me another hundred.
Did I?

Forget credit-card fraud. Now the guys are committing note-switching cash fraud. So how are you supposed to pay for your stuff?

Take a cameraphone photo of your notes before you hand them over? Write down the serial numbers? Ask for a receipt there at the table? Do an internet transfer?

I haven’t quite decided. But in the meantime, there are a couple of venues that aren’t seeing my face again.

Behold the liberators’ triumphant anti-climax

I asked my mate Garvey to tape Joy Division, which he did, but then he sommer put this other stuff on the B-side to fill up the tape. 

            It was angry, militant rap music, over the most chaotic samples, shrieks and breakbeats. But the bizarre part was that through the chaos, I could make out almost every word the guys were saying.
            There was a main rapper with the diction of a sportscaster. It was like Robert Marawa commentating over the sound of burglar alarms, machine guns and tape recordings of Chris Hani speeches.
            And they were down with the struggle. Their tracks name-checked Mandela and Steve Biko. Called out Margaret Thatcher for not backing the boycott…
            “Mandela, cell dweller, Thatcher, You can tell her clear the way for the prophets of rage”
             And in between, this hype man, screaming interjections like, “base for ya face” and “yeah boyiii” or “Flava Flav!” or even “you’re blind, baby! Blind to the facts of who you are, coz you’re watching that garbage!”
            It was terrifying, but exhilarating at the same time.

This was 1989, now, apartheid in full effect and all my mates were unanimous that rap was crap and alternative rock was what ruled. But deep within myself I nurtured the first little idea that maybe there was some rap music that wasn’t that useless.

The stuff on the B-side of my Joy Division tape, for instance. Fresh Prince, Doctor Alban, 2 Unlimited, Tone Loc… that stuff was pretty crap. But this stuff was something else.

It turns out it was Public Enemy! A bit of research revealed that the album was called It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back. It was and remains the most militant, most politically conscious rap album I’ve ever heard.

Then, last Friday, Public Enemy came to play Joburg. This group, which had metaphorically stood shoulder-to-shoulder with their black brothers during the struggle all those years ago, came to SA for the first time.

But no one had heard of them.

I got to interview frontman Chuck D and almost had an embolism I was so excited. That night I went to the concert and… there were hardly any black people.

Most okes there were white goofballs in their thirties who could still remember when you got music on tapes. A couple of black dudes had come to see what the fuss was about.

Obviously Public Enemy had been banned in the bad old days. Sadly that banning had worked. Hardly any of their music got heard inside the old RSA.

The worldwide anti-apartheid campaign had helped raise awareness outside SA and driven international pressure on the Nat government to yield to democracy. In a way that helped set us free.

But it didn’t sell them any records over here. And thus, on the night of their triumphant return to the country they helped liberate for their black brothers, the greatest rap group of all time played to a couple of hundred white okes.

For what it’s worth, we were deeply grateful.

Naked on the road to Joburg...

Allan almost got rabies when he was eleven, from a cow bite in the cane fields above Tongaat. They were actualy hunting rats. when it happened, with pellet guns, him and his boet.

In those days the preventive treatment for rabies was a hectic course of injections. You had to have thirteen thick injections in your abdomen over three weeks.

Allan reacted strangely, in that he developed epilepsy almost immediately after the treatment. And it was a kind of epilepsy combined with hydrophobia. Really weird.

But Nico knew none of this. He only knew Allan through work at the jewelers.

So the opportunity comes to take a trip up to Joburg. Allan is driving up to visit friends, and Nico has an aunt up there. And The Mission are playing that weekend, so why not.

They drive out of Durban early-ish. They aiming for six, but it is almost seven before they pass Tollgate Bridge.

Allan's got this weird hydro-epilepsy, and he's not on medication, so he shouldn't really be driving. And Nico's blissfully unaware.

Until just after Mooi River. They've just had Nando's. Half chicken & chips meal, hot, to eat here with a Coke, and a cheese 'n' pine burger, mild, with wedges and a Coke.

They're on the first hill out of town, when Allan starts groaning in this creepy way and going, "No! Not now! Please not now! Nnnnnng!"

He starts having a half-fit and swerving all over the road. He's barely able to pull over into a culvert. By this stage he's screaming! He jumps out the car and starts running around, tearing his clothes off, shrieking like a stuck pig at a Beatles concert!

Nico gets out the car with big eyes. "The water!" wails Allan, stark naked by this stage. "Pour the water on me! Aaaaargnnnnnn!"

But there is no water! All they bought at the Quikshop is biltong and chips. They mos had those Cokes at Nando's. By now Allan is rolling around kaalgat in the road, just inside the yellow line. So Nico has to think fast.

He pops the bonnet and pulls out the water reservoir for the windscreen wiper. He charges up to the frothing Allan and splashes some on his back.

"Aargh! Aargh!" he screams with every splash, as if it's red-hot lava being poured on him, or as if someone's whipping him with a sjambok.

So there they are. Allan stark naked, frothing and rolling around in the emergency lane. And poor Nico, straddling his naked form, dribbling windscreen-wiper water over him to gasps and screams, as the pantechnicon trucks on their way to Joburg come flying past, hooting.

Ous must have had no idea what was going on!

The passion, the pride, the pussy, the point

There’s no more frank a form of advice than what you get from a total stranger. Lawrence and Themba only met an hour ago, but already Themba has some pertinent advice for his new acquaintanc

“Don’t fuck it up, bra! Do not fuck it up! If you want pussy, there’s all the pussy you need here. Don’t go break up with her just because you miss her. Fly over there once a year.”

The subject is long-distance relationships. Lawrence’s girlfriend is studying at Oxford. Oxford! Doing a PPE degree in politics, philosophy and economics.

Lawrie’s only now grasping the sheer pain and loss of not having his lady around. At the same time he’s grappling with the temptation of being on the Joburg social scene with no obvious lady on his arm and more loose freaky women eyeing him than he’d ever have though possible.

He’s suffering from guilt. He feels guilty that he feels attracted to these other women. And he dreads the possibility that he may break down and shag some of them while he’s in that long-distance relationship with his lady, Khensani.

Themba is all about the big picture. This lady is the best that Lawrence is ever going to have. She is on a path to greatness. So what if she’s going to be in the UK studying for a few years. You just head on over there and hang out for a bit every year. If you get horny here at home in SA, you just do what you need to do. You go to The Attic in Parkhurst, or you go drop a couple of grand on Patron at Latinova, you meet some girls, you offer one of them a lift home.

Don’t get too attached to nobody. Keep phoning her, man. Maybe propose to her. You want to be keeping that lady interested. Go over there and propose to her. Look at you, man! You’re miserable. You need to keep this thing alive. Don’t fuck it up, dog. It can be done. You can keep a long-distance relationship going for as long as you want, man.

Lawrence is not so sure. The lady’s only been away for three weeks and it’s tearing him apart. He can’t live like this. He can’t pine for this woman like this for another four years. He can’t do it. It’s going to kill him.

He needs his woman with him, not on the other side of the world. And that Khensani is focused on her career, on her goals, is throwing his tenuous career planning into starker contrast. When she was working at the nightclub, hostessing, freaking out as her departure date approached… When she was doing that, his job subbing on the newspaper looked positively careerist.

Now it’s looking a lot more like the flat, dead-end job it really is, while K has her whole future mapped out. When she comes back and slots into a position as a publishing company executive, all black and fabulous, he’s going to be looking pretty ordinary.

Does he even deserve her? Was this thing really ever destined to go the distance? Did they perhaps get together precisely because there was this built-in deadline, this pending departure? Maybe that’s the only thing that really brought them together, the knowledge that, like it or not, they were going to have to part after six months or so, when K headed off on her London adventure.

Then they’d stumbled in the final act, when they were supposed to have the tearful break-up. They just couldn’t do it, they’d sworn to somehow make it work. They’d stay in touch, do a lot of Skype… run the relationship like a video conference. Except that’s not really how Lawrence was raised.

If there’s one thing he was about, it was physical, relentless loving. He was a man of intense passion, a slave to his urges. And now his girl was gone.

“I’m having fuckin’ six wanks a day,” he shouted at Themba, just as there came a silent lull between songs. And still his urges weren’t keeping quiet. On the other side of the braai a lady with a long set of light-brown braids was rocking a pair of tight cotton shorts over a set of those sheer black leggings with the little rhinestone detail by the zipper at the ankle.

It was Lerato, from the same club where Khensani used to work. But fuck that. He just couldn’t see himself holding out for four years. And Mike had this bottle of Lagavulin that he was forcing on anybody who looked vaguely interested. Single malt, boet.

Lawrence’s phone rang. It was that same +44 number. Khensani from London. He excused himself. “Babe?”

Back at the braai, Themba prodded the marinated lamb and shook his head. “He just mustn’t fuck it up.”

And so, within Lawrence Davis, the battle raged. This faithfulness thing, was it going to work? And what was the point anyway?

The point, Themba Modise, mused, as he fielded his first phone call of the evening from his wife… The point. Ah, the point was to finish with all the bullshit and mindgames of the single scene, to find yourself the best woman you possibly could, so you could mellow out and concentrate on other stuff.

“Ja. We are about to start eating,” he told his wife. “I should be home in about an hour.”

A journey to the meaning of pain...

“The main thing is not to cry,” he tells me, then reels a length of thread off a roll, snaps it off and ties the thread into a loop.

He is Daniel, a large Egyptian man. The last time I was here I only wanted a haircut, and we discussed middle-Eastern politics for a solid hour. It was a long hour.

This time it’s going to be longer. This time I’m doing a presentation for a grooming client. I need to be impeccable. There must be not a pecc to be pecced on any peckish part of me. Impeccable.

So I’ve come for the full package. The haircut, the cutthroat razor traditional shave, and something called “eyebrow threading”.

Macho to the max, Daniel will tolerate no crying in his salon, not during the eyebrow threading. So I’ve gotta be brave. I’m not even sure what exactly Daniel is doing. He leans in close to my face, brings the threat up to the region of my eyebrow, and then there’s a white flash of the most exquisite pain. Good grief! It’s like a laser beam has sliced off a line of flesh from my upper eyelid.

Everything goes a bit blurry as I realise exactly what I’m in for. It’s like dentistry without anaesthetic. A cold sweat condenses across my forehead.

“Not too sore, no?”

Er, no. It’s cool.

I’m lying, this is the most pain I’ve experienced since the great shingles episode of 1998. And I’ve got another ten minutes to go!

Eyebrow threading apparently originated in the middle east, which is why middle-eastern women have such impeccable eyebrows. Those are tough women. Strong women. Women prepared to endure the white-hot pain of twisted thread tearing hair from their faces every few weeks.

Those women have my undying respect.

But the scary thing is that men have a lot more hair on their faces than women. We have tufts growing out of our ears, for god’s sake. Nostril hair! There’s that downy virgin hair beneath the eyes, just above the shaving line.

And all of that must be threaded if a man is to emerge impeccably hairless enough to impress a bunch of grooming clients.

People, people. You have not felt pain until a large Arab man has turned your nostril inside out, twined all your nostril hairs up in sewing thread and then… pung! Torn the lot of them out by their roots.

Cry? By the time he got to ripping the hair out of my earhole, I was weeping onto Daniel’s shoulder like a jilted bride. It was like getting twelve fillings at the dentist, except the fillings were all over the soft parts of your face!

I still had the haircut and the cutthroat razor to look forward to, and we hadn’t even started discussing middle eastern politics yet.

The next day I would be delivering a presentation to a room full of grooming execs.

Hell, by the time Friday arrived, I had earned those beers.

A superstar, by the sink, in Welkom

Chris was on the Silverado Brake Pads team. They sponsored him. And they paid for his travel on the circuit. He was 33, and him and his wife had just separated.

So he quit the investment firm and went on the tour full-time. Well, actually there were only seven stops on the track racing tour that time anyway. So he just added East London, PE and Welkom.

The Silverado sponsor meant he also got to appear in their magazine ads. It was him in his racing leathers, next to his bike, and holding a Silverado brake pad under his arm. The big, shiny one. He actually had three. The one under his arm and there were two on the ground in front of him.

So the tour gets to Welkom. It’s the Friday night before the race, and they’re at the track testing till late. He was third row in qualifying, so they had a few things to sort out.

They only get back to the hotel at 11. The whole place is closed, so they head to the Longhorn. But it’s so late. As Chris and them get into the Longhorn, the okes are packing up. You just check all the chairs are on the tables. There’s a hot blonde barmaid behind the counter, so Chris figures he might as well try. They all full of oil from the track, but the ous are famished, hey. He has to ask.

Tunes, “Hi, I’m really sorry, but I have to ask. I know you guys are closing, but we’re really hungry. Maybe you can just make us some take-aways. We’ll just have six burgers to take away… If it’s possible.”

And the girl says. “Normally I’d have to say no, but for a famous motorbike racer… I’ll make an exception.”

Turns out she’s actually the manager. And she’s seen these brake-pad ads with Chris in his leathers. She keeps the kitchen open, lets them sit there and finish their chow, and then Chris still shags her in the kitchen afterwards. By the sink. He just tunes the guys to go back to the hotel without him. She says no fine, she’ll give him a lift.

After they were finished she did give him a lift to the hotel. She was very cool about it, just giggling to herself a bit.

The next day Chris came third.

He came second in the championship that year. The next year he did his CFA and went back to being a financial adviser. These days he just does mountain biking. For fun.

And the next year, him and his wife got back together. They been married 18 years now. They just took that one year off.

But that night in Welkom, Chris got a little taste of what it feels like to be famous. Maybe that’s all he needed. Maybe it was just something he was wondering about.

That night, in the kitchen at the Longhorn, there by the sink, Chris felt like a superstar.

Why Sbu’s salon was out of business for a month

Sbu disappeared. He just stopped answering his phone.

            The result was that half the black ladies in Sandton couldn’t get their hair done. The northern suburbs of Joburg have more than a hundred salons that’ll charge you R5 000 a pop to put extensions in. All the celebs will tell you they go there. All the ladies who lunch in their Gucci sunglasses at Tasha’s and the Design District and Madiba Square

But Sbu is where they really go. If you bring your own hair, you can be in and out for three hundred. Five hundred maybe.

So when Sbu stopped answering his phone, a lot of ladies didn’t get their hair did. A lot of weaves started growing out. A lot of flying dog didn’t get dealt with. A lot of undergrowth started becoming visible.

And when Sbu eventually picked up, he had a lot of explaining to do.

Turns out he’s been arrested for smoking weed. In this day and age!

Ja, arrested for smoking weed outside the Randburg Mall. He tells the cop, just give me a fine, or tell me what I need to pay you. That’s the wrong thing to do, and the cop decides to teach him a lesson. Arrests Sbu, and charges him with possession. Can you believe, but he gets a month in jail!

And he had his phone with him the whole time.

In the van on the way to prison, one of the experienced prisoners says his phone’ll get taken away from him when he gets booked in. Says they usually put their phones up their bum when they come in. He kindly offers to put Sbu’s phone up his own bum.

Sbu politely declines and takes the responsibility upon himself. Gets his Nokia right up there.

The smuggling goes all according to plan and Sbu’s Nokia makes it inside undetected. But the problem comes with the retrieval. The foetus has shifted, in a manner of speaking, and delivery is impossible.

After five days of agony, Sbu goes to the prison doctor and tells him his predicament. His phone is engaged. He can’t get reception. His number won’t go through. He’s been trying to log a call.

The doctor sends him for x-rays and removes Sbu’s Nokia without too much hassle.

Then, with Sbu lying in the delivery room, the nurse takes his phone into the next ward. Fatal error! He never sees it again!

When he’s recovered, Sbu demands to know what happened to his phone. The doctor tells him, no, the screen was damaged. Five days of gastric acids and stuff. They weren’t able to save it. He’s sorry.

Within a few weeks, Sbu’s salon was open and he was back in the game. The ladies of Sandton were able to get their respective hair situations sorted, and Sbu got a new phone.

He needed to move on, and the new phone serves him perfectly well, but he still wonders, in his quiet moments, outside the Randburg Mall, what happened to that old Nokia.

It could still be alive. Somewhere. New screen. Someone else’s sim card. But Sbu likes to think if he ever sees it again, he’d still recognize it. He would know.

Race of doom II: Touchdown

“My friend. David. Here is my phone number. Remember my face. Somewhere in this airport is my driver’s licence. Please! Please try to find it for me. Please!”
I’m still racing to my doom.
I’m on the plane. It’s 7.30. A miraculous save. I should’ve been flying at 6am, though. So I’m an hour and a half behind the curve.
On my crazed, running-late scramble through OR Tambo, I’ve managed to lose my driver’s licence. So now I’m traveling to Cape Town without ID.
I’m not going to be able to fly back, because they don’t let you on a plane without ID. David is my only hope. A minute before I got on my plane, I grabbed the nearest security guard and begged him, please find my ID. Please!
For now, though, that’s a subsidiary nightmare. I first have to get to this bloody conference. I’m so late!
This may yet be salvageable. If we touch down in Capeys at 9.30, I could taxi it to Stellenbosch pretty quick.
But first, two hours in the clouds, in transport limbo. Alone with my terror. So bladdy late…
A fitful sleep. A blank, uncomprehending flick through the in-flight mag. Finally we’re touching down…
I sprint through arrivals. They’ve rebuilt Cape Town international. Like a target on the run from a sniper, I sprint aimlessly through the terminal, scanning for a taxi logo. Quarter to ten… There! Taxi! With this intense, urgent vibe I’ve recently developed I round on this oke with a walk-talkie and a bib. “I need to get to Stellenbosch. Fast!”
Suddenly I’m hot property. Trip to Stellies must be lucrative for the drivers. After a tug of love, I’m bundled into a taxi and we head. I’ve got my phone out, trying to download a map, plan a route and explain it to my driver. It’s a cunning one through Kuilsrivier, then you hop on the M23 and come into Stellenbosch the back way.
The M23! Ah, we missed it! Missed the turn-off! We gotta get off this highway. It’s after ten. I’ve officially missed the start of the conference. Phone’s losing charge…
It rings! “Hallo! It’s me David. I’ve got your ID!”
“Awesome! You’re my hero! Can you get it Cape Town? Find someone who’s getting on a plane to Cape Town. Any flight! Anyone.”
“Get off here!” to the taxi driver, “Take the M23!”
“Hello! Who’s this?”
“My name is Angela.”
“Angela, please. I’ve left my ID in Joburg. Can you do me a huge favour and bring it down to Cape Town with you?”
“Here! Here! Bottelary Road. The M23”
“You will? Angela, thanks so much. Please leave it at baggage enquiries at Cape Town airport. Thank you, you’re a lifesaver!”
I may yet get back to Joburg. In the meantime it’s 10.20 and I’m lost on the Cape Flats, trying to find Stellenbosch, so I can burst into a conference in mid-stream pale as a ghost and looking like I’ve gone through hell backwards.
Will my boss be angry or even worse, “disappointed”? So bladdy late.
Still shvitsing. The taxi meter’s on R500. Racing to my doom. And paying top dollar for the privilege.
The price of an education. If you’re gonna set your alarm, Make sure you do it properly.

FHM High Maintenance!

FHM vs Ramblin' Jay Bones, featuring Khanyi Mbau. Co-directed by Hagen Engler and Erik Verster.

Racing to my doom with no ID

My day starts 13 minutes after my plane takes off. Sadly I’m in bed when that happens, and SA 603 is taxiing into position on runway 14 at OR Tambo.
Oh my god! I’m late! I’m late! I missed my flight! I missed my flight! My god! But I set my alarm. I set my alarm. I thought it was getting late! It was supposed to go off at 4.15am!
I pack in 35 seconds, and I’m out the door within a minute. I scramble into the car and I’m on the highway in a freaking state! Oh! My flippin’! God! I missed my flight. We’re off to Cape Town, our whole management team, to go to this conference. And I missed my flight!
I don’t even bother checking my phone, but I know what happened. I set the alarm for 4.15pm by mistake. Hallelujah, the traffic hasn’t quite started, and I’m able to absolutely plant it down the N3, over Gillooly’s and onto the R21. I park in the expensive parkings right at the airport building, and sprint over the boardwalk. I stop at the flight-schedule board. It’s 7am. There’s a 7.30am flight. It’s already boarding, but it might be possible…
I sprint to the SAA ticket-sales counter and meet Arushan. “Dude! You gotta get me on the 7.30 to Cape Town.” It’s R341 for the flight change. By fluke I’ve got cash on me.
“Just go to the check-in counter…”
I lurch across there and immediately forget the flight number that Arushan’s just told me. “I’m on the 7.30 to Cape Town!” I’m schwitzing like a rapist.
I show the guy my driver’s licence. Come on, come on, come on. Ag, no. He’s a rookie. My stress transmits to him, and he starts fumbling over his keyboard. “Er, I’m having a problem with the system…”
After an eon, he hands me my boarding pass and my driver’s licence and I lurch into middle-distance stride across the marble check-in hall. I show my boarding pass to the lady, then ram my phone and keys through the scanner. On the other side I stuff the things into my pocket and…
My drivers! Have I got it? I check my money clip… no. My pockets… pants, jacket, inside and out… Oh god, where’s my driver’s! I’ve lost my driver’s! I’ve dropped it somewhere in the check-in hall. (Tick, tick, tick…)
I’ll end up in Cape Town without any ID! They won’t let me on my flight back!
I grab the nearest security guard. David, his tag says…
“Calm down,” he tunes me, “Calm down!”
I’ve got him by both shoulders, I’m six inches from the end of his nose. My flight takes off in a minute’s time. I’m not got missing two flights in a row. I’m not!
“My friend. David. Here is my phone number. Remember my face. Somewhere in this airport is my driver’s licence. Please! Please try to find it for me. Please!”
Tears are coming. I’m at a low ebb. I’ve got thirty seconds to make the flight that’ll take me to a meeting I’m late for anyway, so my boss can kak on me massively. I’m racing to my doom without any ID.
It is 7.12am on the worst day of my life.

The tip

It’s about two, which is always the watershed time of the evening. Zouk was never going to get super packed tonight, but it’s a nice comfortable kind of full. There’s room to dance, but enough interesting people to make the face-browsing fun.
There’s French okes. There’s always French okes. These guys are here on an IT contract. They like the place because of its Francophone Africa vibe. I like the place because of the sexy girls’ bums and how they gyrate like a water snake, when the DJ puts on that Lady Gaga.
So by two the Red Bull’s wearing off and it’s time to bail. Last pee on the way out, wait for my babe and then we hit the road.
The men’s room has an attendant. Hands you a paper towel after you wash you hands, and a tip box conveniently placed there by the basin. Luckily I’ve got some coins, so I drop ‘em in the box and go wait by the ciggie machine.
Still no Baby. Oh! I’m going to need to tip the car guard! I’ve just given all my coins to the washroom attendant. And besides that, all I’ve got is notes.
So, lemme see. Perhaps I can duck back into the washroom and steal, say, four rand from the guy’s tip box. Six was actually quite a generous tip, come to think of it.
So I wander back into the toilet. There’s a couple of other guys in there, so I go lurk in the stall and pretend to pee. I peer over my shoulder, where the tip box looks like it’s probably out of the guy’s line of sight…
I make a pass for it, but as I get there, the other dudes turn to leave. I quickly change plan and start washing my hands. The attendant passes me a towel. “Shot, dude.” I have to duck out of there without tipping him.
By now Baby’s back, and we head for the car. I check my money clip. It’s a couple of hundreds and a twenty-rand note. I guess I’ll have to give the guard R20. Twenty’s a serious tip, but at least the car guard’ll be stoked. I’ll probably make his night!
We’re parked just across Fredman Drive. Right opposite the club. The car’s still in one piece, so I get out my cash and hand the guard his tip. “Thank you boss, thank you,” he comes. Super grateful.
Just then I notice that, Oh no! I’ve given him a hundred and twenty bucks! No no no no no! I give an involuntary gasp and lunge for the blue note! I just can’t afford a R120 tip!
I just manage to tear the hundred out of the guard’s grasp before he pockets it, leaving him with a now rather forlorn-looking twenty.
I find myself apologizing to the oke, as I retreat into my vehicle. The guy gives me a click of disdain and trudges off without even directing me out of my bay.
I’ve been a generous man tonight, but my PR has been kak.

The parking problem in Bulgaria, and other London lessons

It’s London. A bar in the most elegant city hotel. But somehow you always take the weather with you…
Like Drago here. He’s got a problem. His apartment block in Sofia is going down. The place has really seen better days. Not least because of the cars.
The rapid transformation of Bulgarian society from Eastern bloc austerity to capitalist materialism has meant every sucker with a job and a cup of ambition is driving a car.
Not a special car. A VW Passat, a Nissan Micra, a Mazda, maybe an Alfa… But of course Sofia was not design to accommodate a million cars. The roads, sure, but not the parking lots.
The simple fact is that there is nowhere to park in Sofia. So people park everywhere. The pavements and sidewalks of the city are parked kerb to doorstep with Passats and Mazdas. So tight, that you can’t walk on the sidewalk.
And Drago’s a pedestrian. He’s lucky enough to have a flat right across the road from this workplace at Radio Sofia. So he doesn’t need a car. He can get anywhere in the city on foot.
From his base in the apartment complex. This little, six-storey number here. The one with the twenty hatchbacks parked on the pavement outside. From here he can walk anywhere.
But the problem is indoors. There on the fourth floor, where that Alexander has decided to open a business in his flat. A spa! He opens a spa! In a two-bedroom flat! With Jacuzzi and tanning beds and massage tables. In the same flat where he stays with his wife and their two children!
One day you suddenly notice posters up around the neighbourhood. Radio jingles on Drago’s own radio station. Last week he found himself having to do a live read publicizing the illegal spa in his own building.
Of course it’s a screaming violation of the building’s code of conduct! But no one’s going to say anything, because Alexander is such an uncomplicated individual. Such a direct, salt-of-the-earth guy. You could never get him to sympathise with the building code of conduct. A defiant man.
The last time someone raised an issue with him was the time Kaloyan asked him to stop leaving his rubbish bags in the passage. He got a broken nose for that.
Was the new business really a spa? Not a brothel? A knock shop? A place of prostitution? How can we be sure? Well, we know, because the last brothel was the one on the third floor. When they opened that, the place was suddenly full of young ladies. That was actually rather pleasant. And there was less equipment involved, less threat to the structural integrity.
And those ladies are polite. They’re still there, for all he knows. It’s just difficult to tell them apart from the women running the home-shopping business on the second floor…

I should be DJing tonight

I should be DJing tonight at Taboo or Zanzibar, or Latinova, or Moloko or wherever the kids of today are jolling. I should be being flown all over the country by promoters and so I can play at dodgy events and then spend the night on their couches…
I should be on the front cover of tabloids complaining about how Arthur stole the beat for his latest song from my single, Umleqwa. I should be living the life, I should be being sued for child maintenance by some presenter on SABC1.
I should be spending a night in the Rustenburg charge-office cells after a scuffle at the Samas between me and the guy from Prime Circle. That’s what I should be going. All because I’m SA’s foremost DJ.
I’ve always had the DJ skills, sure. Great taste in music, timing, handsomeness… All that was missing was the opportunities. So back then, the key was the first big break.
Me and Bopper had been playing around town. We had a night on Mondays at the Brass Monkey. We’d been playing house parties. There was a particularly sweet one in Lansdowne Place. The night I first played Come Out And Play by Duke Mushroom and Acorn kissed this one girl under the tree across the road.
Bopper was jolling at Einsteins that time on alternative nights. But over the one December, he got a gig in Plett for matric rage. So he organizes it so I can play in his place at Einsteins.
In those days Einsteins was the mainest jol. Alternative night at Einies: Tuesday and Thursday night. The playlist never varied. It was the last days of rock music in the mainstream. Dance culture was just starting to make waves, but for now, alternative night at Einsteins was the pre-eminent social event in PE’s southern suburbs.
I’d been going there for years. I could list the playlist by memory. Where Is My Mind, Roadhouse Blues, Blister In The Sun, Loser, Been Caught Stealing, Killing In The Name Of…
Then there’s a spell where it gets more mellow, and you play a bit of a reggae/rock vibe. That’s the place where you play D’yer Mak’er by Led Zep and I Love You by Springbok Nude Girls. I knew it off by heart.
So I make my debut at Einsteins that December. There are girls there. This one blonde girl even came down from Cradock especially…
I play my first half-hour note perfect. Every song in its place. The dancefloor fills up…. Then I get to the reggae place. I play D’yer Maker, then I get out the Nude Girls CD, the one with the big eye on it. I pop it in the CD tray. And – no need to even listen on the headphones – I know this disc like the back of my hand. I fast-forward to I Love You on track 12…
As history shows… I Love You is in fact, track 11. Track 12 is a shite, self-indulgent song called Rabbit. It sounds like someone drumming on a paint tin with their fingers. It is the kakkest song on that whole album.
Its ability to clear a dancefloor is probably unrivalled in all of popular music. My major-venue DJ debut is terminated shortly thereafter. By the time I get to the bar, that blonde girl has gone. Back to Cradock, for all I know.
Suffice to say that now, a decade later, I am not in the holding cells for a shabby, drug-fuelled scrap with a celebrity. I am in my lounge. I go to work at 9am. Not as a DJ.