by Ben Trovato
“The Miss Earth South Africa is a programme that aims to empower young South African women with the knowledge and platform to create a sustainable difference in our plight to combat the destruction of our natural heritage.”
I felt my loins cooling. Words like “empower” and “platform” are passion killers. Words like “combat” and “destruction” are quite sexy, though. Although I was a little bit turned on by the absence of spelling errors, my libido sustained a fatal body blow by “... a sustainable difference in our plight to combat ...” It’s a sentence that belongs in calipers.
I care about the planet. I really do. I don’t even have an oven, freezer, dishwasher, heater, fan, iron, washing machine, tumble dryer, sandwich maker, blender or electric gate. I don’t have a bath. My shower runs off gas. I have four working lights and no telephone line or alarm system. If you’re picturing some kind of wretched, untethered misanthrope hunkered down in a wooden shack in the milkwoods, you’re on the right track.
All my neighbours have elephantine carbon footprints compared to mine, which is the size of a field mouse’s paw, but the day they discovered I don’t recycle, they began looking at me as if I was single-handedly jeopardising their children’s future. Please. That job belongs to our politicians, not me.
Although I’m currently on the Cape Peninsula, I come from Durban where it’s too hot to bother about separating the garbage. Durbanites sweat. They battle to breathe. What little energy they have left at the end of the day is expended on yawning, swatting mosquitoes and taking potshots at housebreakers. Or people who look like they might be housebreakers. Or visitors.
It’s different in Cape Town. Here, people have nothing but energy. And money. And dogs that never shut the fuck up. They had me down as the enemy the moment I dragged my bulging black garbage bag onto the pavement. They looked at each other, then back at me. Where is his bulging see-through plastic bag? Where is his little Checkers packet containing his biodegradables? My eyes narrowed. Their eyes narrowed. If we had been Mexicans, it would have been a proper standoff. There would’ve been insults flung, challenges to duels, knives drawn, tequila passed around and sultry women cheering us on. Instead, we shook our heads and went back inside.
A week later, some or other Prius-driving face-washing dogooder left a clear plastic bag on my gate. Always up for new experiences, I thought I’d give it a shot.
I was surprised at how quickly it filled up with microwaveable containers, newspapers, traffic fines, mutton curry tins, beer bottles and mutilated sex toys. But what really surprised me was that I needed just one small plastic bag for the other stuff.
I took both bags out on garbage day and stood there looking at them, raising my eyebrows and nodding, hoping for an epiphany that never really came. My neighbours seemed happy, though. One gave me a thumbs-up, which, thanks to Donald Trump, has become the new Nazi salute. I gave him the traditional one-fingered Durban salute and sloped back to my eco-friendly shack, warm brandy and uncooperative cat.
CLASS WAR? MAYBE AFTER HAPPY HOUR
South Africa has finally overtaken Britain as the world’s foremost nation in whining and complaining. Crime is too high. Standards are too low. Sex is too fast. Service is too slow. I hate my job. I don’t have a job. I have a headache. I have Ebola. Too many white people. Too many black people. Not enough rain. Too much rain. On and on and on we go.
We complain, then sit back and wait for something to happen. And when it doesn’t, we complain some more. We shake our heads and mutter about emigrating. Then the weekend rolls around and we braai and get drunk and suddenly this is the best country in the world.
Governments aren’t overthrown because they refuse to meet demands for free weed and beer fountains on every corner. They get their metaphorical heads chopped off because they can’t, or won’t, meet demands for jobs and houses and affordable food and fuel.
Fuck the Jabberwock, my son, for ’tis nothing compared to the underclass. The jaws that bite, the claws that catch. Beware the Juju bird!
The underclass? You mean there’s another class below the working class? Good god. Where are our passports? Chanteclare, get the children into the Range Rover. Hurry! Bring the Fabergé eggs! Leave the horses!
The only reason the Economic Freedom Fighters have a presence in parliament is because the government allowed an underclass to develop. To be fair, the underclass was always there. The only difference is that they now have a voice. Turn your back on them at your peril. France still has plenty of second-hand guillotines they could easily offload on a country like ours.
Unlike Britain, we don’t have a clearly delineated class system. I’ve worked it out, though, and if we had to go down that treacherous road, we’d have at least 18 classes ranging from lower underclass, through middle nouveau riche and all the way to upper old money, also known as the Oppenheimer class.
Anyway. Where was I? Ah, yes. Complaining. You know what I hate? People who, when you ask how they’re doing, say, “Alright, I s’pose. Doesn’t help to complain.” I want to shout, “Look over there!” And when they turn to look, I sink my teeth into the fleshy part of their neck and shake them like a terrier shakes a rat. You gutless drone. Governments love people like you. The given-ups. The what’s-the-pointers. If you can’t even be bothered with the first level of resistance, you deserve to die on your knees.
Part of my job is to fix or foul the fault lines that run through civil and uncivil society, but I’m not going to turn my words into action unless you shiftless swine back me up. I am not riding into battle against the political overlords only to turn around and find you’ve all buggered off to the pub.
We have an odd way of protesting. Cape Town’s taxi drivers, furious at being constantly fined and harassed by the cops, go out and set a bunch of buses alight.
Fourteen trustees on the board of the government’s medical aid scheme each earn more than half a million rand for meeting a few times a year and, in protest, the Communist Party will demand free houses for all. The police are corrupt – stone the ambulances. Teachers are drunk – torch the clinics. The ANC doesn’t deliver – vote for the ANC. Welcome to Alice in Blunderland.
Overwhelmed with outrage, I went to my local pub to think about what exactly I should complain about this week. I have two local pubs, one on the west coast and another on the east. Skabengas in Cape Town and the Bush Tavern in Umdloti. Also Beach Bums, there by Westbrook. And the Blow Hole in Glencairn. And the … okay, so I have more than two local pubs. But right now I’m in Cape Town.
Sweeping changes have been made to one of my favourite bars without anyone having consulted me. I am outraged. Real skabengas once drank at Skabengas. Now it’s full of hipsters with ironically trimmed beards and young married couples sighing at each other over cocktails and canapés. Obviously it’s no longer called Skabengas. Its new name is Beach Road Bar. The owner doesn’t do drugs, that’s for sure. And if he does, it’s the kind of drugs that stifle the imagination or make you want to water your garden or go to sleep.
Skabengas had wooden tables, wooden benches and people you wooden want to take home to meet your mother. Rastas controlled the bar, a giant TV played terrible music and even worse sport and stray dogs had the run of the place. By midnight the floor was sticky with oestrogen and the air thick with testosterone. It got loud and the pony-faced neighbours complained regularly.
The battered old bar that lurked with intent against the far wall has been replaced by a younger model posing cheekily in the centre of the room. The stairs leading down to the toilets, which would turn into the north face of the Eiger as the night wore on, have been tamed and decorated with sparkly mosaic tiles.
There are sculpted plastic chairs and couches with scatter cushions, the bisexuals of the furniture world. The décor is all pastels, pale wood and whites. A lot of whites. Particularly among the clientele.
Funky electro punky reggae trip hoppy poppy jazzy blues is piped through speakers discreetly mounted in the corners. Pre
yuppification, it was women of a certain age being discreetly mounted in the corners.
Having said that, the view over Noordhoek Beach and off towards Kommetjie is as magnificent as ever. I’m only surprised the interior decorator never insisted on bringing in flocks of pink flamingos fitted with diamanté collars and leg warmers studded with Swarovski rhinestones.
The other good thing is that you can still bring your dog. Also, an elderly gentleman has just walked in with a bright green parrot on his shoulder. He ordered a draught. The man, not the parrot. I don’t know what the parrot ordered. It seemed wrong to eavesdrop on a conversation between a man and his parrot. I’ve never seen a man so in love with a bird. I only hope it doesn’t die before he does. It’s a non-racist parrot, too, being quite happy to perch on the arm of a black customer for the classic selfie with parrot. This country should be run by parrots, especially if they only ever say, “Hello. How are you?” Parrots don’t make promises they can’t keep. I had a parrot once. I called him Onan because he kept spilling his seed. Sorry.
My waitress was a young white girl. Her manner was awkward and her forced laugh set my eyeballs on edge. She said it was her first time. As a waitress or among people? I couldn’t be sure.
She waited until my mouth was full, then rushed up and began enquiring about my pizza. It turned into an interrogation. My phone started ringing and still she wouldn’t stop. “It’s very colourful, isn’t it?” she said. Could she not see my gob was stuffed with pizza? Could she not hear my phone ringing and that I was waiting for her to shut up so that I could answer it? Apparently not. Apparently my pizza was so bright and colourful that we needed to discuss it as a matter of some urgency.
When I asked for the bill, she said, “Not a problem.” Are there restaurants where asking for the bill is a problem? “I’m sorry, sir. You haven’t eaten enough to warrant dirtying the cutlery and soiling a napkin. You will have to order another item before we can allow you to pay and leave.”
She brought the bill and stood there while I fished out a couple of hundreds. Then she asked a question I’d never before been asked in a restaurant.
“How much change would you like?”
Well, honey-bunny, I’d quite like all of my change, if you don’t mind, and then I shall turn my mind to matters relating to the tip. Too polite to actually say that, I found myself being pressured into making lightning-fast calculations using nothing more than my brain. Having caught sight of numbers, my cerebral cortex shut down almost immediately. I would have sat there slack-jawed and drooling if it weren’t for an obscure neural reflex that allowed me to do little more than go, “Umm ... umm.”
Customers shouldn’t be put in this position. Working out 12 per cent of R97.45 and then somehow relating that to the change from a R200 note is the sort of thing you go to Harvard to learn.
FREE WILLY – COMING TO A DOCTOR NEAR YOU
I have been ill of late. At first I never realised I was ill. I thought I was merely hungover. The symptoms are the same. Dizzy, swollen groin, gaping wounds. But nobody stays hungover for three days, not even after a binge registering nine on the open-ended Retchter Scale.
I don’t have a regular doctor. Most of them moved away after seeing me. Choosing a doctor is not a question of simply opening the phone book, closing your eyes and slamming a steak knife into the page. Using that method, you are more likely to end up knocking on the wrong door. The gender of the doctor is important given that there will be a certain amount of lying down and a general loosening of clothing, often from the patient’s side. Would one rather have one’s willy inspected by a man or a lady doctor? Not that there was any need for a willy inspection in this case. However, an inordinate number of medical practitioners seem to think that all illnesses can be traced to the male member. You go in to have your pterygium tensioned up and the next thing you know, the ophthalmologist has his hand down your trousers and is asking you to cough.
I have never been fully comfortable with strange men handling my privates, regardless of where they went to school. As it turned out, I chose a lady doctor because she was the only one who could fit me in before the turn of the century.
“Will 3pm be okay?” said the receptionist.
“Do I have a choice?”
“Yes, sir. You can choose between seeing the doctor and dying.”
“Three will be fine.”
A doctor’s waiting room is my personal Room 101. Obscure Orwellian references aside, I have a powerful loathing for the places. Waiting is what other people do. I lack the temperament and humility to wait. If a queue is longer than three people, I walk away. As a result, I often go without food for days.
Someone was already in there. With a baby. The mother yakked, the doctor murmured, the baby did that terrible thing that babies do. By the time they had finished, the baby was old enough to have children of its own.
“What ails thee, squire?” asked the doctor. Oh my god. I had been in the waiting room for so long that everything had come full circle and we were back in the Elizabethan era.
“Physician, I fear ’tis a touch of the Bubonic plague,” I said, praying she would end this Shakespearean farce before bringing out the costumes and forcing me to reenact something disturbing from Macbeth.
She told me to hop up onto the bed. Had she not noticed that I was 1.94 metres tall? Were I to hop, I would smash through the dry wall and land in the corridor. I lowered myself onto the bed like a giraffe at a drinking hole and began undoing my pants.
“No need for that,” she said, her voice heavy with regret. However, she wasn’t going to let me escape without a fondle at the very least. Her hand disappeared down my broeks. Poking around in my groin, she looked me in the eyes and said, “It’s very big.” I blushed and turned away. “Why, thank you, doctor.”
She looked at me as if I were an imbecile. “Your gland is very swollen,” she said.
She asked me to do what all doctors ask – whether you are there for a flu jab or to have your face stitched back on. Wee in a cup. I went off and brought it back overflowing. Three drops would apparently have been sufficient.
Her litmus paper turned into a rainbow, then settled on the colour of a squashed tick. She shook her head. When doctors shake their heads right after conducting a test, you might as well kill yourself. I scanned her desk for a scalpel. Nothing. Maybe I could gouge my eyes out with the edge of her platinum picture frame. I doubted she could take much more of my vitreous humour. That’s a joke for the doctors. If you don’t get it, go to bloody university and get your MBChB, whatever that is.
“It’s your kidneys,” she said. Oh dear. Who will give me one of their kidneys? I have offended everyone I know. I am going to have to get in touch with someone who works for an organ smuggling syndicate. I shall visit the Chinese takeaway tonight. Get some crispy duck with hoisin sauce and make discreet enquiries.
“An infection,” she said. “Nothing too serious.” She agreed that I had probably picked it up surfing at one of our ecoli-riddled beaches.
“That’s good,” I said. “I bet people like Justin Bieber and Miley Cyrus get their kidney infections from doing far less wholesome things than surfing.”
She opened the door.
“Are you sure you don’t want to see my ...”
“Goodbye,” she said. “You can pay on your way out.”
A LETTER TO “HARDCORE HUNTRESS” MELISSA BACHMAN
Dear Melissa,
I just wanted to say how much I love that photo of you posing next to the lion you killed in South Africa. The picture has gone around the world and everyone thinks you are absolutely wonderful. Well, apart from those who think you are a coldhearted serial killer with an incurable narcissistic personality disorder.
I think you are great. I wish you were my wife. My dream would be to travel the world, just you and me, with matching His and Hers .357 Benjamin Rogues, shooting animals in the face just for the hell of it.
I can’t believe the size of your telesc
opic sights. This is not a euphemism. That thing mounted on your gun is huge. I’m surprised you even had to leave America. It would have been cheaper to just get on a stepladder out on your porch, face South Africa and pull the trigger.
I bet you’re a real tiger in bed, too. That’s a post-orgasmic glow on your face in the dead lion shot, that is. Was it good for the lion, too? Must have been. He looks completely exhausted. And who wouldn’t be after taking a bullet in the head? It was the head, wasn’t it? I don’t suppose it really matters. The important thing is that South Africa has one less lion. These furry bastards sleep all day and contribute nothing to the economy. We can’t even go out without one of them sloping up to our window and asking for a handout. And god help us if we don’t give them some kind of meat-based product right away. They think nothing of chewing our arms off right there at the traffic lights.
I read your tweet just after the gun battle. “Stalked inside 60 yards on this beautiful male lion. What a hunt!” Sixty yards sounds a lot, but it isn’t. Not if the lion charges and you have to suddenly make the five yards back to your vehicle.
Some honey-buggers seem to think it would have been a fair fight if you had been dropped into the middle of the bush by helicopter at night, and then used nothing but your teeth and nails to kill the lion. Look, you’re American. Those are some big-ass scary teeth you have in your head, no doubt about it. But who said it has to be hand-to-hand combat? Jesus talked about survival of the smartest. Besides, if lions enjoy living so much, why didn’t they invent guns?
I see on your website that you have killed almost every animal that ever dared to walk, fly or crawl across your path. Well done. I particularly liked the one you gunned down in Alaska before you came over here to deal with our lion, nyala, duiker and zebra problem. The nice thing about zebra is that you can go over to them and shoot them in the back of the head with a handgun without even spilling your drink. We’re very lucky to have them. Or not have them. Whatever.
