by Ben Trovato
Reduce the strain on the national grid by emigrating.
Bring your own handcrafted utensils to a restaurant. If the waiter objects, stab him with your biodegradable fork.
Wear edible clothing.
LIFE IS SHORT. HAVE AN AFFAIR. GET TAKEN FOR A RIDE
Apparently I have reached the stage where a midlife crisis would be appropriate. Right now, as I write this, it doesn’t feel like a crisis at all. I have a cold beer at my elbow. My third, actually. Beer, not elbow. Pierpoljak is on the iTunes. He’s a 50-year-old white Rasta from Paris and looks much younger. Nobody who smokes a lot of weed looks their age, let alone acts it.
Perhaps I am having a mid-wife crisis. But that’s not strictly true, either. I’m not between wives. I was, a few years ago, but now I’m in my post-wife period.
Meeting women is proving an interesting challenge. I approach them, they back off. Sometimes they run. I don’t often give chase. One doesn’t wish to seem desperate.
Women in normal countries are a lot more open to initiating contact than their South African counterparts, whose default setting is suspicion and hostility towards anyone they haven’t already met in the gym, at a braai or through a close, trusted friend.
A mate of mine suggested I try one of the dating websites. He said the stigma wasn’t as bad as it used to be. Of course he was lying.
An ex-girlfriend, who would spend weekends at my place during the first separation from my second wife, met a man through a dating site. I think she must have been flirting with him online while we were still together because, a couple of weeks after we broke up, she flew to Cape Town to see if they were compatible. I guess they were because a year later she had a teething baby with the man she “loves very much”. She was 19 years younger than me. Cuter than a baby puff adder. They separated within four years.
The problem with dating websites is that they have a ratio of 1.5 million men to nine women. That, as I was about to discover, was just one of the drawbacks.
I googled dating sites and Ashley Madison popped up. Being a newbie, I thought it might be a good idea to start off with them. Their front page has a picture of a hand holding a key with the tagline, “Life is short. Have an affair.”
I thought I could register and immediately start hitting on appropriately inappropriate women, but there’s a list you have to fill in. I hate lists, but I hate celibacy even more.
Under “My intimate desires” are “Preferences and Encounters I am open to”. This includes everything from “light kinky fun” to “one-night stands” and “aggressiveness”. Aggressiveness? Really? Hi, my name’s Cindy. I like to be punched repeatedly in the face. How about you?
Then there’s “My perfect match” – “What turns me on”. This includes “body piercing”, “natural breasts”, “has a secret love nest” and “disease-free” (in case you’d rather have someone riddled with STDs).
I rushed over to the search area to find the woman of my dreams – dreams that needn’t go on for more than a few minutes once or twice a week. You can tailor your search to look for people between 18 and 66 in any location. I chose “within 20 kilometres”, because, you know, the price of petrol.
Right away, NightyNiteGoddess caught my attention. Her tag read, “Fun-a-thon”. That’s what I was looking for. A goddamn fun-a-thon. She was 32, 1.65 metres tall and weighed 60 kilograms. So far, so good. Among the things she liked was “extended foreplay/teasing”. That’s fine, just as long as it doesn’t take up half the day. “Sharing fantasies/sex talk” was another. If we really have to. I’ve always felt sex talk to be faintly ridiculous. And “Role playing”. Again, not something I’m overly interested in. Do we really have to pretend to be police officers or heroin addicts? Isn’t it wild enough that we have no clothes on?
She was interested in a weird mishmash of things like travel, motorcycles, karaoke, boating, romantic walks and erotic literature. I “favourited” her and a few hours later there was a reply. Woohoo! Scored on the first try. There was a “collect message” from her. Eager to read what she had to say, I clicked on it. And there, right there, I understood what Ashley Madison was all about.
To see her message, I’d have to buy credits. They ranged from a thousand (for R1 600) down to R125 for a hundred credits. Sending and opening messages will cost you five credits. If you want to chat on IM, it’s 30 credits for 30 minutes.
Being the kind of person I am, I had to know what NightyNiteGoddess said. So I bought the cheapest package. Her message read, “Come say hello.” Ah. Okay. Not overly friendly, but an invitation, nevertheless. But before I went onto IM to have a good old credit-busting chat, I googled “Ashley Madison scam” and the scales fell from my eyes.
There was a litany of warnings. For a start, any pretty girl who puts her undisguised face on the site and is constantly online is likely to be a fraud – a bot created by Ashley Madison itself as a way of generating money.
Then there were the warnings you’d think would be obvious, but, when you’re thinking with your willy, might not always seem so. If a gorgeous girl in her 20s shows an unsolicited interest in you, and you’re, say, a greying middle-aged chap with a paunch, then it’s probably a scam.
For just R5.99 a day, I can become a “Priority Man”. This means I will be highlighted in the top three results of each page. Right now, I am “appearing on page 50 of search”. If a woman gets in touch after wading through and rejecting 50 pages of other men, she’s the one for me.
I just got a message from iwillnothesitatenomore. She’s 27 and lives in San Diego, California. I wouldn’t go next door to bonk a woman who uses double negatives, let alone travel to America.
I tried another site. Zoosk seemed easy. Too easy. Then I spotted a button that said, “Coins”. Ah. There’s the catch. Not quite the catch I was looking for.
Zoosk doesn’t seem to have reams of questions to answer, but it does have some sort of meter on its profile page. It tells me that my rank is 6 423 753. I hoped it was out of seven billion. Apparently not. In fact, it says, “You’re NOT popular!” Well, fuck you, too. How very rude. Oh, wait. I can boost my popularity. But it’s going to cost me 100 coins. Silver dollars? Drachma? Who knows. I’m not prepared to give these people any more of my money, feeding off our pain as they do.
I saw a picture of one woman with her eyes shut and a mongoose nestling in her neck. She might have been dead for all I know. Another made Aileen Wuornos look like Charlize Theron.
Being as shallow as I am, I was rating women purely on their looks and skimmed through the database at a rate of knots. I sent a “wink” to the pretty ones. I don’t really know what I’m doing. In the space of 10 minutes I’ve sent out 28 winks. I think there might be trouble on its way.
I’m a bit worried about women who say they’re looking for men to grow old with. What if I meet them and they think, “Damn. Too late for that.”
I’m also worried about women who tick the “Spiritual” box under Religion. What the hell does that even mean? Are they going to be slipping out of the house at midnight and dancing naked inside fairy circles under the full moon? Burning incense and chanting while I’m trying to brush my teeth?
One even said, “Compatible star signs only, please.” And I thought I was picky. The moon is rising in Uranus, honey. Zoosk appears to have selected an age range for me. How kind of them to decide that I’d only be interested in women in their late 40s and 50s.
It’s starting to feel a bit like visiting a used car lot. They all look so shiny and new but when you take them for a test drive, you soon enough discover their shock absorbers are soft and their bodywork shows signs of having been patched up.
ZEN AND THE ART OF MOTORCYCLING MORONS
There is so much barbarity and horror in the news these days that when a feel-good story from another country pops up, it gives one sufficient cause to break out the amyl nitrate and dancing girls. It is only people who live in South Africa that would consider a deadly shootout between riva
l motorcycle gangs in Texas to be a feel-good story. Maybe it’s just me.
I have always wanted to be in a motorcycle gang but I can’t grow a proper beard, have no tattoos and prefer the snarling savagery of a dirt bike over the growling conceit of a Harley Davidson.
I like the names biker gangs have over there. Hells Angels. Bandidos. Cossacks. Mongols. Outlaws. Pagans. The Hells Angels are so hardcore they don’t even bother with the apostrophe. It’s one of the reasons I could never join them. I’d be the one with the marker pen eventually getting stomped because I was forever fiddling with their leather jackets.
Ohio has the Zulus Motorcycle Club. They make it clear on their website that they “only accept real brothas that aren’t afraid to put it down on the slab”. What’s more, these brothas didn’t call themselves Zulus for the hell of it. “Some of the original members actually met with Zulu tribesmen and learnt the ways of being a great warrior nation.” The Zulus apparently saw their American brothas as “warriors that ride the iron horse” and gave them permission to call themselves Zulus, “with the promise to uphold the ways of the great Zulu tribe of Africa”.
In return, the bikers “gave sets of our colours to them so they have a piece of our club within their tribe”. I bet that’s what happened to Piet Retief and his men when they dropped in on King Dingane for a calabash of umqombothi. They were wearing the colours of Die Boere Bikers van God. Obviously there was going to be trouble.
We have our own gangs, but their names need work. The Sowetan Eagles sound like a newsletter produced by the Percy FitzPatrick Institute of Ornithology. Roodepoort has the Active Disciples Riding 4 Jesus. I wouldn’t tangle with them under any circumstances. I bet they take Bible-punching to a whole new level. Cape Town has the Anonymous Riders but they never get together because none of the members know where anyone lives or even who they are. And, sure, we also have our very own Hells Angels. They have six chapters in South Africa. Or, as their website would have it, “charters”. No apostrophe and a spelling mistake? You don’t get more badass than that.
Speaking of Piet Retief and betrayals of trust, I once lost a much-loved motorcycle and along with it any hope I ever had of starting my own gang. I was living in Cape Town, the wrong place to own a 1974 Yamaha XT500. Endlessly kick-starting a pigheaded thumper in torrential rain is one thing, but crash starting it down a wet hill at 3am only to have the back wheel lock up as you reach the intersection is another altogether. I had a decal of a flaming eyeball on the petrol tank and the brute had spent many years trying to kill me. It was time to part ways.
I put an ad in the paper. If someone was prepared to give me R9 500, they’d be saving my life and keeping me in beer for a weekend.
The first person who called asked about the condition of the bike. Like anyone else selling second-hand goods, I lied through my teeth. He asked what time would be convenient to come around and take a look at it. I was in Hermanus at the time, sowing wild oats and planting seeds of future discontent. The bike was parked on the pavement outside my rented hovel in Sea Point.
“I’m out of town,” I said. “But feel free to go along and take a look at it.” I told him where the bike was parked. He said he’d have difficulty making a decision without taking it for a ride. And that’s when it happened.
I don’t know if there was something in the filth I was drinking, but I was momentarily suffused with overwhelming faith in my fellow man. I told him that he could start it with a 50c coin or even his house key. It’s one of Yamaha’s more intriguing security features on the older XT500.
“When you’re done, leave it where you found it and give me a call,” I said. There was a long silence. “What if I steal it?” he said quietly. I laughed. “You won’t. You told me your name and I have your number on my cell.” He laughed, then I laughed. Then he laughed some more. “Call me,” I said, immediately forgetting his name and accidentally deleting his number.
When I got back to Sea Point, all that remained of my bike was an oil stain on the tar. I was saddened not so much by my own stupidity, but because that bike and I had a history. We had been up mountains together. We had fallen over together. We had evaded traffic cops and angry motorists. We had done everything a normal couple does except bicker and throw things at each other. Also, we never slept together. Like so many others, this was a marriage that had been destroyed through a betrayal of trust.
“I trust you” has overtaken “I love you” as the most treacherous phrase in common use today. Trust is a viper in the slippery hands of those who prey on the weak and vulnerable. Look, I’m not saying that I am weak and vulnerable. Far from it. I weigh 100 kilograms and have never had second thoughts about snapping the spine of a kabeljou as it twists on the end of the line fighting to get at my jugular.
Several other people phoned about the bike in the days that followed. The words, “Sorry, it’s been taken” have never rung more true.
I expect every man, woman and child reading this to be on the lookout for a black unlicensed XT500 with dysfunctional lights, a broken speedometer and a flaming eyeball on the tank. Unless the thief is as moronic as I am, it’s likely that the Durban number plate is already a souvenir on someone’s bedroom wall. It also comes trailing a string of outstanding warrants, but you wouldn’t know that just by looking at it.
If you spot my bike, make a citizen’s arrest. Even if you are travelling at high speed, run him off the road. Try to minimise damage to the bike. There is a reward, of course. Vigilante justice doesn’t come cheap these days. Bring me my bike, or even one that looks like it could be mine, and you will receive a signed copy of my latest book and a bottle of tequila.
BUBBLING WITH BETRAYAL IN A HOT POOL OF LIES
The first thing – let’s call her Caprice – said when she got into the Land Rover was, “I’m not having sex with you. Just so you know.” I’d met her a few days earlier through a friend. For fugitives and narcissists, Facebook is a friend.
It quickly became apparent – to me, at least – that we’d kill each other if we entered into a romantic entanglement of any consequence. I didn’t quite know how to broach the subject. It was too early in the relationship to engineer a fight that would allow me to stamp and snort, slam doors and swear never to return. Hell, it was too early to even call it a relationship. The high horse would have to stay in his stable this time around. Emigration or faking my own death seemed the only options.
“We’re incompatible,” she said, fumbling for a seatbelt that didn’t exist. I felt a curious mixture of elation and hurt. Elation that she had taken the initiative to break it off before it could properly begin and hurt because … well, I suppose because I’ve almost always done the breaking up and somehow I felt cheated.
“Maybe it can work,” I said, mentally punching myself in the face until blood spurted from my filthy lying mouth. I believe the divorce rate in this country would be a lot lower if couples simply stopped trying to communicate with one another.
I had barely started the car before she began laying down boundaries and ground rules. I have never really bothered with boundaries of any kind in my relationships. I find they stunt creativity and encourage aberrant behaviour. But this wasn’t a relationship so perhaps boundaries would be good, although I couldn’t see how.
I revved the engine and dropped the clutch. A wheel spin would show her that I was a man not to be trifled with. The Land Rover lunged like a dying bull and stalled. I hit my head on the windscreen.
“So,” I said, rubbing my nut. “Let me get this clear. We’re going to be friends without benefits?” She nodded excitedly. “It’ll be fun.”
No. It won’t. It will be the exact opposite of fun. The expression “friends without benefits” doesn’t even exist in the heterosexual community. And for good reason. My buddy Swirling Eddie has a theory that men would want nothing to do with women if they didn’t have vaginas. Then again, he also has a theory that humans are descended from apes.
This was new territory f
or me. I had never had a female friend who didn’t want to try out all the rides at the carnal carnival. I didn’t see how this could possibly work.
“Just treat me as you would one of your male friends who you presumably don’t attempt to mount in rutting season.” I wasn’t convinced. It all felt deeply unnatural. But we were on a mission and there was no time to argue.
“Hold tight, bru,” I shouted, swerving violently into the traffic. “Make a skyf and skop a dop, ekse. Let’s get this road trip started.” Thirty seconds later we were having our first argument. Apparently I couldn’t treat her like one of the guys after all. I had to treat her like a girl whose giblets held no interest for me. I didn’t know how to do that so I sulked and drank on my own while she flicked through her phone, probably looking for less demanding men to be sexless friends with.
The nice thing about driving a 20-year-old Land Rover is that the rattling doors, howling wind and engine noise make conversation virtually impossible.
We were on our way to the Smoking Dragon Adrenalin Festival in the Drakensberg and I was bargaining on a “with occasional benefits” clause being written into this contract of the doomed before we found ourselves adrift in the mountains.
Three hours after leaving Durban, I veered off the potholed R74 and through the gates of the Amphitheatre Backpackers. I was inside the bar before the car had come to a standstill. There was nobody else around apart from a hobbit moonlighting as a bartender. I negotiated the launching of a 72-hour tab and set about self-medicating for altitude sickness. The lodge is halfway to Joburg and pretty high. So was almost everyone I encountered over the next three days.
Apart from the hobbit, there was a Jacuzzi in the bar. It’s a weird and potentially perilous thing to have in any drinking hole in South Africa and I was looking forward to participating in the mayhem that promised to be unleashed in this bubbling pit of depravity once the sun had set.
