Durban Poison

by Ben Trovato

  The doctor? How did my doctor become an Indian? He was blocking my path to the door. I would have to shoulder charge him if I hoped to make it out. Just then another door opened and the doctor in the photograph walked into the room. For a fraction of a second I had the urge to shout that a terrible mistake had been made and that I really wanted the other guy to see me. Could I get away with this without everyone assuming I was the illegitimate love child of Steve Hofmeyr and Sunette Bridges? Probably not.

  Look, I didn’t care that the doctor was Indian. Some of my best friends are Indian doctors. I was just utterly confused. Thinking of it, of course his surname was Indian. Four of the six letters were vowels. It was his Christian names that threw me. And, obviously, the photo of him as a white man.

  As if to show him and the entire waiting room that I wasn’t a white supremacist, I shook his hand. This is clearly the wrong thing to do. Doctors touch the filthiest things, and I’m not just talking about foreign currency. I would’ve asked to wash my hands if I wasn’t afraid of looking like a cross between Adolf Hitler and Howard Hughes.

  I went into his office and described my symptoms. He gave me the medical nod and asked what I did for a living. I could hardly say, “I write a weekly column”, because of the very real risk of him replying, “No, I meant for a living.” Anyway, my infection had nothing to do with my so-called job, which really only puts me at risk of contracting deep vein thrombosis from sitting on my arse all day.

  Without taking my blood pressure, checking my heart rate, feeling my pulse, asking if I had any allergies or a history of mental illness or was on any medication or even giving my infection a name, he wrote out a prescription for two antibiotics and wished me luck. I didn’t try to shake his hand this time. He didn’t get up.

  Later, I chucked a couple of pills into my mouth and reached for the half-empty beer on the passenger seat. That’s when I saw it. A red sticker on one of the containers screamed, AVOID ALCOHOL. This made me feel substantially worse. I hoped this was a general health warning and not something I was expected to do for the duration of the course.

  I have on occasion put things into my mouth without first asking what they were. In almost every case, though, alcohol tended to enhance their, er, healing properties. This time I thought I’d do some research. Find out exactly what was in this filth that conspired to prevent me from drinking. First off, I discovered that it contained 0.8 per cent alcohol and “could be harmful to alcoholics”. This made no sense.

  One container yielded a printed insert 92-centimetres long. Almost a metre. I measured it. You’d need the eyesight of a yellow-billed kite to read it, so I checked it out online. Sure enough. Even a small amount of alcohol will make you violently ill. The antibiotic is on the World Health Organisation’s List of Essential Medicines. I don’t care. Beer should also be on that list.

  It’s used to treat a variety of infections, including something “popularly known as beaver fever”. I am almost certain that I don’t have beaver fever.

  Hang on. The drug is listed by the WHO as a possible carcinogen? Tested on lab animals, it gave them cancer. Whoa. Back up the bus, Gus. I’ll take the beaver fever, thanks. The antibiotic I’ve just necked is banned in America and Europe for use in animal food. Because it’s carcinogenic, you can’t give it to cows, sheep, pigs, chickens, goats and quite possibly beavers, but it’s okay to give it to me? I don’t know about that, man. It just doesn’t feel right.

  The other antibiotic – a pill the size of the Hindenburg – is also used to treat people who have been exposed to anthrax. That’s pretty serious stuff. One of the more beneficial side effects is hallucinations but, disappointingly, I haven’t seen anything weirder than my neighbour’s children.

  Which brings me back to the antibiotic apocalypse. Right now, superbugs are killing 700 000 people a year. Want to hear the forecast? By 2050, resistance to these drugs could cause the deaths of 10 million people a year. More than cancer will kill. This isn’t a figure I got from some homeless man shouting on a street corner. It’s in a report commissioned by the British government. The Brits are not known for public displays of hysteria. If anything, the report underplays the crisis.

  Scientists are working hard at discovering new classes of antibiotics. In the past 30 years, they have found one. One. I’m not making this up. Bacteria are laughing at us. They don’t take us seriously. They’re worse than our government. You think Julius Malema is dangerous? Try antimicrobial resistance.

  Sensible people who know things are warning of the world being cast back into the dark ages. Routine operations and even a cut on your finger could be a death sentence.

  We’re at this point because doctors have spent decades dishing out antibiotics like they were Smarties. And also because farmers pumped their animals full of the stuff to make them grow faster. As a result, germs have adapted and mutated. It’s evolution, baby.

  In Britain, 45 per cent of all antibiotics is given to livestock. You really don’t want to be eating pigs. This could prove to be the only tenet of the Judaic and Islamic religions that might actually save lives.

  None of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies have made a financial commitment to invest in new antibiotics. Why? They are expensive to produce and offer a poor return because they are taken for a short period only. Drug companies don’t want miracle cures that cost them a fortune to research and develop. They want sick people to stay sick, but not so sick that they die and can’t buy drugs anymore.

  So now there is talk of rewarding, well, bribing, drug companies with millions of dollars to develop new antibiotics. Because, you know, they’re really struggling to survive. Pfizer makes a paltry $22 billion in profits a year. I don’t even know what that is in our currency. My head would explode if I tried to work it out. In the space of three months, drug company Gilead made $3.5 billion from its hepatitis C drug alone.

  To be fair, their overheads are high. For instance, a few years ago GlaxoSmithKline was fined $2.2 billion for excessively promoting a drug for depression to kids under 18. Merck, on the other hand, paid a piffling $950-million fine for illegally promoting a painkiller. It goes on.

  And it’s no secret that pharmaceutical companies bribe doctors to prescribe their drugs over others. I don’t know if my doctor is among them. All I know is that his haste to give me antibiotics bordered on the unseemly. Antibiotics, I should emphasise, that cause cancer in laboratory animals. I still took them, though. Doctors know what they’re doing, right? RIGHT?

  GIRLS JUST WANNA HAVE GUNS

  I have tried my damnedest to mine the situation for humour but no matter how much I drink, I keep coming up empty. Where is our Donald Trump? It’s not right that America keeps setting the bar to new lows that few nations can reach. Trump is comedy gold. It’s as if someone, maybe Jesus, poured all seven deadly sins into an orange sack and said, “Go forth and represent the worst of humanity.” Why would he do this? I have no idea. Jesus moves in mysterious ways. From what I’ve heard, he also had a wicked sense of humour. Who else would turn water into wine and then, when everyone’s off their faces, urge them to join him for a stroll across the Sea of Galilee?

  I’m not being altogether fair here. Trump embodies only six of the deadly sins. Sloth probably doesn’t apply to him in the same way it applies to you and me.

  Turning to Facebook for inspiration is like turning to vodka for sobriety, but I did it anyway and that’s where I found Lynette Oxley. Her profile picture is of a rottweiler looking as if he’s about to chew the photographer’s face off. That’s the fun part. She and her husband, Paul, run a company in Joburg called Tac Shac. I don’t know what it means. They sell teddy bears, semi-automatic pistols, shotguns and assault rifles. Okay, I lie. They don’t sell teddy bears.

  Lynette contributes to a blog called gunservant.com. The blog’s logo is, “The Truth Is Our Weapon.” When “truth” and “weapon” get together in the same sentence, it usually ends badly. Someone called Corinthian, or ma
ybe he lived in Corinthia, once wrote, “In truthful speech and in the power of God, with weapons of righteousness in the right hand and in the left.” I close my eyes and see Clint Eastwood in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. Which, I suppose, pretty much sums up the Bible. And America. And our cabinet.

  Anyway. That’s enough religion for now. In the piece I read, Lynette points out that the media tells us “we are under constant and violent attack by criminals”. If the only reason you think you live in a violent society is because the media tells you so, then you’re not getting attacked enough.

  At least 20 people are shot and killed every day in South Africa. According to Lynette, more guns is clearly the solution.

  She says the only way to level the playing field “with a man twice our size” is by using a gun. The average woman is five-foot-six. This blood-crazed mythical man would then be 11 feet tall. Truth? I don’t think so. Okay, fine. Hyperbole is second nature to gun groupies so I’ll let it slide.

  Her proselytising is mostly aimed at women. Actually, her contribution to this website was a tribute to Women’s Month. Let’s get started, girls. Anyone for tea and bullets … er, biscuits?

  In an attack, the Bad Guys, as she calls them, will go for the men first. “This will give you, as an armed woman, an advantage.” This is just one of the reasons why it’s not a bad idea to have a man around the place. It might be the only reason. “If you decide to purchase a firearm, you need to change the way you think.” I imagine you would. For a start, you’d need to stop seeing people as living, breathing human beings and start seeing them as moving targets.

  Lynette has been “carrying” since 2003. If a pregnant woman says this to you, don’t assume she’s talking about the contents of her womb. Just run.

  She says there’s no point having your gun locked up in a safe – it needs to be with you 24/7. One of the conditions of getting a gun licence is that you have a safe. I don’t know how Lynette gets around this. Maybe she straps the safe to her back.

  Oh, right. The law simply says you must have a safe. It doesn’t say you have to keep your gun there. Lynette says carrying your gun 24/7 means you have to make certain arrangements. I expect she’s talking about your VGO – your visible gun outline. In the old days, women needed only worry about their VPL. I don’t know what the answer is. I’ve seen videos of female shoplifters stuffing frozen chickens up their skirts, so I imagine secreting a gun wouldn’t be much of a problem.

  She does say that concealed carry would involve having to change your lifestyle and your wardrobe. I’m surprised a fashion designer hasn’t come up with a range of cocktail frocks with discreet built-in holsters for that sexy little 9mm Beretta in your life. As for lifestyle, well, I imagine you’d want to avoid those wild house parties where the men get drunk and throw the women into the pool. On the other hand, you do have a gun.

  “Please don’t throw me in the pool.”

  “Arrr c’mon, babe! Why not?”

  “Because if you do, I’ll shoot you in the teeth.”

  Sensibly, she advises women against keeping a gun in their bag. Studies have shown that it takes the average woman between four minutes and two days to find any given item in her handbag.

  Lynette says she carries her gun in an inside waistband holster, so if she suddenly shoves her hand down her broeks, you need to know this is not a come-on gesture. This is a go-ahead-make-my-day gesture. She also has an outside waistband holster for sport shooting, which presumably is when the mugger starts running. Firing at a moving target is always great sport.

  She prefers the outside holster because she has “built significant muscle memory for this position … the gun is where my body is used to it being”. My body is used to being in the slouched-over-the-bar position and only two muscles have any memory worth mentioning.

  Lynette says most of her friends “appendix carry” or carry “small of back”. I always thought the small of a woman’s back was one of their more easily locatable erogenous zones. Turns out it’s nothing more than a convenient indentation in which a pearl-handled pistol may nestle. I always wondered about that post-coital metallic taste in my mouth.

  Lynette moves on to what she describes as the most controversial issue. When is it okay to kill someone? Apparently not. The most controversial issue is which firearm to buy. I expect she means controversial in the sense that debate on this topic frequently becomes so heated that people get shot.

  She says the size and weight of the gun should “fit in with your particular lifestyle and circumstances”. If, for example, you’re a kindergarten teacher, you might want to look at something smaller than the half-metre-long Pfeifer Zeliska revolver. I suppose it all depends on how rowdy your class is.

  “One of my biggest irritations is what a lot of men (I am not saying all men) think women should carry.” Typical bloody men. If they’re not trying to murder you, they’re trying to tell you what gun to carry.

  Men (not all men) seem to think women should carry .38 special revolvers. I’d be happy if women just carried their own shopping bags.

  Lynette says they’re talking rubbish. Revolvers are bulky, have bad triggers and are hard to shoot. Also, they have a lot of stoppages. They’re like the Mineworkers’ Union of handguns. She suggests ladies – as she calls them – should rather go for pistols.

  By now, all the girls reading this will be jumping up and down, screaming, “Okay fine! But what calibre? Tell us the calibre!” Relax, ladies. Help is on its way.

  Lynette’s all-time fave is a 9mm Parabellum round rather than, say, a 380-auto/9mm short, whatever that is. My knowledge of bullets starts and ends with Black Talon and, for that, I have Oscar Pistorius to thank.

  She recommends hollow-point ammunition. It is designed to expand on impact, maximizing tissue damage, blood loss and shock. Yeah! Now you’re talking my language. The expanding bullet decreases penetration, which is a good thing because over-penetration could cause collateral damage. Tell me about it. I’ve lost a number of bedside lamps through that kind of thing.

  Lynette reminds us that firearming needs constant practice. She says handgun skills are perishable and can go off if not used. Like bananas. She suggests joining a sporting organisation such as the SA Defensive Pistol Association or the police. Kidding. The police aren’t remotely sporting. They’re quite defensive, though.

  “Shoot your gun at least once a month,” she says. If you’re not a joiner, you’re going to have to shoot someone who is committing a crime. Or looks like he’s thinking of committing a crime. Or might have committed a crime at some point in his life. Do it at the end of the month when he’s more likely to have money in his pocket.

  Lynette wraps up Guns for Girls 101. “I would like to urge South African ladies to stand up for themselves and take responsibility for their own safety! Don’t moan about crime – do something constructive and get yourself a firearm. Have a safe and awesome day!”

  That’s right, ladies. Do your bit. Help end crime by shooting people.

  CHRISTMAS SPIRIT ON THE ROCKS

  Malls are treacherous enough places at the best of times, but everything becomes immeasurably worse the closer it gets to Christmas.

  I self-medicated and went to one the other day. You couldn’t move for tables set up outside the shops. The stuff on the tables wasn’t even related to the stuff in the shops. It’s as if anyone is allowed to walk in with a plastic table and set it up anywhere they please. Cover it with a red and green tablecloth, stick a fairy on it and start selling “unique homemade gifts for the whole family”.

  “Sir, could I interest you in this delightful post-modern sculpture of a giraffe at rest?”

  “Fuck off. That’s two pieces of driftwood glued together.”

  “Not at all, sir. It’s a giraffe at rest. I swear on the life of my hungry children.”

  There was a sign up in one shop that read, “The best gifts are unexpected.” In that case, I shan’t bother getting anyone anything. You can’t get mor
e unexpected than that.

  I overheard one woman say to another, “He’s not a very materialistic person.” I wanted to tap her on the shoulder and say, “What you mean, lady, is that he has no money. Or he’s a penny-pinching tightwad. Either way, you’re better off without him. Come with me. Let us run away to India and live in a gilded palace surrounded by peacocks and tigers and beautiful eunuchs on leashes pandering to our every whim.”

  I hadn’t been in the mall for 10 minutes before I felt a pressing need to drink. I would have had better luck finding a bar in a mosque. Had I instead felt a pressing need to buy a bicycle, a tumble dryer, a 700-inch television, a tin of butter beans or a can of pepper spray, I would have been sorted.

  A lot of men would be far less recalcitrant about going to the mall if they knew there was a place where they could find a beer. And I’m not talking about buying a six-pack and crouching beneath the escalators. Nor am I talking about salacious dens of iniquity where Andalusian virgins gather at the door murmuring in low, husky tones about the range of craft beers that await within.

  A simple bar will do. Rough-hewn stools. Rough-hewn staff. Beer from Namibia. Because if there’s one thing the Germans know, it’s Reinheitsgebot. Purity laws. Sure, they got distracted in the 1940s and tried applying it to race, but in the main they’ve kept it down to barley, malt and hops. Probably water, too, although I hate the idea of there being water in my beer.

  Toyshops always look like they might sell beer in a room round the back. It makes perfect sense. Toys are fun. Drinking is fun. I can’t imagine a more fun place than a toyshop full of drunk people. Children already behave as if they are drunk so they wouldn’t notice a thing. Being South Africa, though, it wouldn’t be long before an alcoholic paedophile serial killer came along and spoiled the fun for everyone.