Durban Poison

by Ben Trovato

  Oh, yes. The caption was, “My first Alaskan brown bear! A beautiful and extremely blonde one to top it off!!” It must have been particularly satisfying for a brunette like you. Blondes have all the fun? Not anymore, they don’t.

  I love how you have taken archery and converted it into a blood sport. The same should be done with other games. Croquet is a giggle, sure, but how much more of a giggle would it be to substitute the ball for a splinter grenade? Place hoops at the entrance to fox or rabbit burrows. Get extra points for blowing up babies. That kind of thing. I’m surprised the British haven’t thought of it.

  I can’t wait to see your beautiful lion with his head cut off and mounted on your bedroom wall where it belongs. Did you know that a lion’s front legs make great sock puppets for the kids if you hollow them out properly? Make sure not to leave any meat in them. You don’t want your children getting all maggoty.

  By the way, I couldn’t help noticing that your lion has a couple of nasty scratches on his face. You might want to take him back and shoot a fresh one. Tell that Julious Heyneke at the Maroi Conservancy that you don’t want a second-hand lion.

  Hope to see you out here again soon. You’d better hurry, though. The Mozambicans are poaching all our rhino and there might be none left if you leave it too long. By the way, I see you’ve been popping up all over Facebook lately. You must be tremendously excited by all the attention. Sure, most of it isn’t the kind of attention a normal person would want. Then again, you’re not normal. Far from it.

  Yours truly,

  Ben Trovato

  WHAT’S WORSE – A BAD HAIRCUT OR A GOOD ROOT CANAL?

  There are two things I fear most of all. Three, if you include cockroaches. What the hell, let’s throw in praying mantises and make it four. Heavy lifting rounds it off to five.

  But all things considered, visiting the hairdresser and the dentist are my number one and number two fears. They are interchangeable depending on the length of my hair and the state of my mouth.

  The other day my hat blew off and, before I could pick it up, someone walking past tossed a five rand coin into it. At first I was outraged, but soon enough realised that this was a very acceptable way to make money without having to do anything more than stand on a pavement with a glum expression on my face. I write for a living. My face and glum, they go back.

  I felt a bit of a fraud shifting from foot to foot, doing nothing more creative than glum-face and expecting to get rich from it. I thought of singing the national anthem but I can only remember the words if I am watching rugby. I tried to picture a rugby match but someone threatened to call the cops when I apparently started shouting abuse at imaginary people.

  Homeless chic has never really caught on. Heroin chic, yes. But for some reason, Vogue magazine has yet to unearth the inherent beauty in a weathered, toothless face and a tangled knot of hair that not even the most desperate of beavers would want to live in.

  I decided to tackle the hair first because I prefer emotional over physical pain. Not that I am a big fan of pain of any kind, really. Sure, whip me if you must, but don’t expect me to pay you for it.

  I once told my father about a bad experience I had at a hairdresser. He reacted as if I had told him about a particularly unhappy ending at a Thai massage parlour.

  “You go to a hairdresser?” he barked. “Are you gay?” He wanted to know why I didn’t go to a barber like a real man. He, incidentally, hasn’t been to a barber in at least 30 years. He cuts his own hair. Charles Manson looks like a poster boy for Vidal Sassoon compared to my father.

  I didn’t even know barbers still existed. The last time I went to one, the army gave me a gun and told me to go off and kill perfect strangers. I imagine I would suffer terrible flashbacks were I to so much as glimpse a barbershop.

  Hairdressers are only marginally less fraught with hidden horrors. I cannot simply walk into one and ask for a haircut. It seems too brazen, too careless. What if it’s a trap? What if it’s not really a hairdressing salon but a front for a government agency that secretly experiments on your brain and then injects you with a substance that makes you forget it ever happened?

  So what I do is walk past the salon several times. Nonchalant, like. I don’t look inside every time I pass by because that would arouse suspicions and then I would have to leave the shopping centre before they could alert the network.

  They are up to something, there is no doubt about it. I have seen intelligent women go into hairdressers and come out five hours later, glassy eyed and unable to talk about anything but their hair. And if you fail to compliment them on it every seven minutes, they fly into a rage and threaten to cut your willy off.

  My main fear, though, is that once I am trapped in the chair, they will try to talk to me. It’s bad enough worrying that I will want to go straight to a gay bar afterwards. But it’s the idea of having to engage in conversation with the cutter that fills me with a bubbling black dread. What if she is deeply offended by something I say? We don’t know that she won’t suddenly start stabbing at my jugular. It may even be me that does the stabbing. My tolerance level for small talk is dangerously low.

  This week I found a salon that, on the surface, seemed safe enough. There was only one other person in there. She had a beehive-shaped piece of hardware over her head that was almost certainly rearranging the neurons in her cerebral cortex. I put on my dark glasses, slipped inside and made discreet enquiries.

  Within two minutes I had a woman shampooing me and massaging my scalp. This seemed inappropriately intimate but I hesitated to introduce myself for fear of opening the verbal floodgates.

  Once that enormous pink sheet was draped over me, I looked like a giant tick that had been sucking on a cow for way too long. My tiny head and swollen body wasn’t something I could look at in a mirror for longer than a few seconds. It made me want to throw up.

  “What do you want?” she said, retching daintily into a tissue. What kind of question is that? We don’t go to hospital with a limb that has been caught in a threshing machine and expect the doctor to ask what we would like done. Fix me, dammit! You’re the professional here.

  From the hairdresser, I stopped off at a gay bar on the way to the dentist. It was the only bar in the immediate area, okay? I was traumatised and I needed a drink. Besides, I imagine dentists rather enjoy the smell of a fine whiskey emanating from their patients’ face holes. I have to say, though, that I have had whiskies that tasted worse than a periodontal disease.

  My previous dentist once removed five of my teeth because he wanted to go to the Seychelles and thought it a good idea to get me to help pay for his airfare. He sold me some kind of prehistoric metal plate with imitation teeth embedded in it. It was like something the Catholics might have invented during the Inquisition to punish the heretics and I never wore it except when I went out. Then I stopped going out and something changed in my mouth because the next time I wanted to go out, it wouldn’t fit.

  While walking the streets in search of a new dentist, I came across a building full of them. All were Jewish. Which is fine. Relax. It’s fine! Some of my best friends know people who have Jewish friends. I googled their names on my iPad, finally settling on someone who was also a musician. I hoped he was a dentist who dabbled in music and not the other way around. I saw a clip of him on his website. He had a lovely voice. I hoped he might sing as he worked. Might as well score a free gig while helping him to pay off his holiday home in Tuscany.

  Flat on my back, I enquired about implants and he gave my moobs a squeeze. He said they felt fine and that men shouldn’t really go bigger than a size AA. No, of course he didn’t. He sent me down the corridor to have my mouth scanned. In the old days, i.e. the last time I went to a dentist, an X-ray machine fired deadly radiation into my face. Now it costs a lot more and is done with a scanner. I was told to close my eyes – probably so that I wouldn’t see the receptionist sketching my teeth and scanning it into the computer.

  Implants are hellishly expe
nsive. In fact, if you could sell all your teeth for the price of implants, you would make R480-thousand. Would you rather keep all your teeth or have nearly half a million rand in the bank? Take the money, you fool! You can easily survive on mashed potatoes and beer. With that kind of cash, you could even gum your way through mounds of expensive stuff. Oysters. Sushi. Cocaine. Who needs teeth? I’ll sell you what’s left of mine. Special price. First come, first served.

  A DRUG-FREE HIGH NOT FOR THE FAINTHEARTED

  I am in a stone house at the foot of a koppie on the far fringe of the Namib Desert. There is no fence. The people who live here don’t even bother closing their front door at night. I can see why. The only chance of getting stabbed is if you startle an oryx or stand on a porcupine.

  It was probably a mistake to flee to the very country in which my ex-wife lives. I saw her briefly and she badgered me into giving her a copy of my memoirs so she could see what I had written about her. It felt as if I were handing over a warrant for my own execution. Early the next morning, I drove into the desert.

  When the people I was staying with offered me a free flight in a hot air balloon, I immediately suspected the ex-wife had read the chapter on our marriage and had put out a hit. My suspicions were confirmed when I discovered there would be only two other people in the balloon with me. Both looked like potential assassins. Then again, in my eyes most people look like hired killers. It’s one of the reasons I don’t go out much.

  Apparently the best time to go ballooning, or get murdered, is at 4.30am. I hadn’t been up that early since the army. When you get out of bed at that hour, the first thought that crosses your mind is, “I want to kill someone.” Perfect if you’re a soldier; not so good if you’re a writer. Although I suppose you could always kill off one of your characters. Too many early mornings and it’s going to be a very short book.

  The hour before sunset found me bouncing through the desert on the back of a bakkie, an icy wind shredding my face. Riding up front were a Dutchman and a Belgian, nationalities notorious for committing all manner of heinous deeds. Moments before my eyeballs froze over, an indistinct shape lit only by starlight loomed out of the gloom. Three shadowy figures worked silently on something alarmingly big. It turned out to be the instrument that would carry me to my death.

  The Belgian and Dutchman – a real one, from Holland – began fiddling with equipment. I stood to one side, hands in pockets, watching warily. Suddenly there was a deafening roar and two jets of blue and orange flame shot into the night. I almost soiled my broeks. If this was the assassination attempt, they failed miserably.

  “Nice try, guys,” I said. “Better luck next time.” They ignored me and continued assembling their infernal chariot of fire. With the balloon inflated, I was ordered into the basket. It was tiny. I have seen bigger baskets carried by fat people at picnics. I was about to jump out and run away when I looked down. The car was already the size of a matchbox.

  “One thousand metres and climbing,” said the Belgian. That’s the trouble with balloons. It’s deathly quiet and there’s very little sense of motion so you don’t know if you’re going up, down or sideways. Actually, it’s only quiet when the pilot isn’t spewing giant gobs of fire into the belly of the beast.

  With us in the basket were three large gas canisters. The kind you see on the back of trucks displaying the warning, “No naked flames”. Given what was happening in that balloon, those flames should have been arrested for public indecency.

  “Gas leak!” shouted the Belgian. My sphincter snapped shut. “What the hell was that?” said the Dutchman. “Sphincter,” I said, pointing at my bottom. “Gas leak is definitely not coming from me.” And wouldn’t be, for quite some time. Not without the help of a crowbar.

  We stopped going up and started going down. Fast. “Maximum velocity ... what are you going to do?” said the Belgian. Jumping seemed like a sensible option. Just before we hit the ground, the Dutchman let fly with a double-barrelled burst of fire and we hovered an inch above the sand. Before I could get out, we were off again. Were they planning on scaring me to death? It was working, but it would take a while. Eventually it dawned on me that this was a training flight. The Dutchman was being tested on emergency procedures. They might have told me before I got in.

  A day later I got coerced into helping film a music video for a cocky German-Namibian kwaito artist. I held a reflector board and made suggestions that everyone ignored. It was viciously hot but they fed me free beer so I couldn’t complain.

  Agoraphobia kicked in after a couple of days and I fled for Windhoek, the city in which I once spent 10 years, spawning a daughter and almost losing my mind. It’s got a lot bigger since I was last there. So have I. Surrounded by semi-desert, the city has the luxury of being able to sprawl in any direction it chooses, like a drunk Russian oligarch.

  Where there was once a parking lot, a Hilton Hotel now stands. It appears to have been designed by the same guy who did the Berlin Wall. It was built on unstable ground and is apparently slowly sinking. I suppose they’ll just keep adding floors. Eventually, guests on the fourth floor will have to take the elevator down to their room. I imagine the view wouldn’t be much to write home about.

  Overlooking the city is a vulgar monolith decorated in a shocking shade of gold. It’s the Independence Memorial Museum. Korean efficiency and Namibian planning is not a good combination. The worker ants shipped in from Pyongyang must have put it up overnight because when someone from the council came around in the morning, they discovered there was no way to get an exhibit larger than an AK-47 into the building.

  The statue of a German genocidal maniac on a horse is gone. In its place is a towering bronze of Swapo ringleader and Namibia’s first democratic president Sam Nujoma.

  I left before Windhoek could suck my soul dry. Hosea Kutako International Airport falls somewhere between a hangar and an abattoir. People mill about like doomed livestock, fear and confusion etched on their faces as they realise there is only one departure lounge consisting of a duty-free shop more expensive than Edgars and a couple of tourist shops selling wooden giraffes and stuffed animals that cost almost the same as the real ones.

  There is a single bar staffed by three slow, hostile women wearing hairnets. Namibia’s entire service industry is staffed by slow, hostile people. Not all of them wear hairnets, though.

  Passengers are expected to remove their shoes and put them through the X-ray machine. Has nobody told them that Osama’s dead?

  I almost missed my flight because the time on my laptop said it was 2.45. I thought I still had three hours to go. It turned out I was looking at the remaining battery life.

  The waitress brought a beer to my table, made deliberate eye contact and said, “That’s your fourth.” I felt like I owed her some sort of explanation, or at the very least a reassurance that my pace generally slowed down after the first four. Or so.

  Namibia has a population of two million people. Nine of them drink moderately. The rest hit it hard. I didn’t understand what her problem was. Maybe she never had a problem. Maybe I did.

  Anyway. I discovered the worst place in the world – the smoking cubicle at Namibia’s airport. It’s a Perspex box designed to accommodate no more than three people. I saw six men go in there and only four reappeared.

  Whenever I fly out of Namibia, I feel like Barack Obama or one of the lesser war criminals fleeing an African country. Not because I have committed genocide or coerced a weak government into accepting a trade deal detrimental to their economy, but because there are none of those elongated air-conditioned tunnels leading from the terminal to the plane. You open a door and you’re on the tarmac. It’s hard to miss your plane. There are never more than three on the apron.

  I took a last look around from the top of the stairs. There was nothing but nothing in all directions. Overhead, a Simpsons sky on steroids. The pilot hadn’t bothered to close his door. I caught a glimpse of his instruments. This is not a euphemism.

  I
had secured myself an aisle seat at the emergency exit, as I always do. You want the window seat? Fine. You do the heavy lifting. The stewardess said that when we hear the instruction, “Evacuate, evacuate, evacuate”, we should immediately clamber over the idiot holding the door open, slide off the wing and help the other passengers get away from the aircraft. What? We have to be heroes? This isn’t in the manual. The other passengers have been annoying me since before we boarded. I don’t care what happens to them.

  “We will shortly be spraying the cabin in accordance with health regulations. If you think it is going to affect you, cover your nose and mouth or shut your eyes.” If you think it’s going to affect you? What the hell kind of advice is that? How do we know if it’s going to affect us if we don’t know what it is? Rather advise us to cover our mouths if we’re about to plough into the ocean.

  The moment we took off I unshackled myself and weaved up to the toilet. A man with a face like a squashed granadilla stepped out of the pantry, or whatever it is they call those foul repositories of synthetic chicken and beef and other assorted high-altitude cancer-causing filth, and stopped me in my tracks.

  “There are bathrooms in the rear, sir,” he said. I turned around. There were four people in business class. They averted their eyes, as the wealthy are inclined to do in time of crisis. My choices were limited. I was pretty confident that I could take him in a fight but if I won it would be a terrible victory. I would then have to lock myself into a tiny plastic room. They would trap me there until we landed. “No need to worry, ma’am. We won’t release him until you’re safely off the plane and the animals from economy class are being let out.”

  The pilot just broke in, interrupting my complicated drinks order, to tell us that we were travelling at 1 020 kilometres an hour “over the surface of the earth”, presumably for the benefit of those who thought we were above some other planet.