Durban Poison

by Ben Trovato

  There was a lot of pain below the ribs, which worried me more than the actual chest pain. Ribs are ridiculous bones. They can make a hell of a fuss, but if you ignore them they pull themselves together sooner or later. There’s a reason God made women from a rib. I was more concerned about my liver. My best drinking days were still ahead of me and I couldn’t have another large, meaty organ falling into disuse.

  I weed in a cup, had blood taken for a liver function test and got X-rays done. The doctor said I had a fracture on the 12th rib, promised to call me in an hour when the results were back and sprinted for her Mercedes.

  The following day another doctor looked at the X-rays and said there were fractures on the third and fourth ribs, too. Also on my clavicle. “Is this sore?” she said, whacking me on the clavicle. Now it is. I had to wee in another cup. Presumably one of the night staff mistook the first for an energy drink. Then it was off to radiology for an ultrasound. With my shirt off, I appeared to be in my third trimester. I joked about my baby while the radiologist smeared jelly on my belly, but he seemed not to be in the mood.

  “I can’t see your pancreas,” he said flatly. I told him it had to be in there somewhere and encouraged him to keep looking. I said drinks were on me if he found it. Then he called my liver Fatty. I gave him the lazy eye. “You’re no supermodel yourself,” I said. After a bit more prodding and poking he gave up in disgust, tossed a paper towel onto my chest, told me to clean myself up and walked out. I felt so used.

  Now I have bags of anti-inflammatories and painkillers, one of which works by “effectively tricking the brain into thinking that endorphins have been released”. Worth a shot. After all, I got into this mess after taking a herbal remedy that effectively tricked my brain into thinking I can fly.

  Luckily I’m on Discovery Health’s hospital plan and have been for 20 years. In all that time, I’ve claimed once. Oh, look. They are refusing to pay for this latest treatment, presumably because I wasn’t flown in by air ambulance with at least two severed limbs and a brain tumour.

  What utter bastards.

  POLITICALLY OFFENDED AT THE INCORRECTLY OUTRAGED

  I live in the disunited states of South Africa. My own personal state is one of outrage. Yours might be anxiety or depression. I suppose there are those who live in a permanent state of bliss, but I don’t have access to that sort of money or those kinds of drugs.

  My outrage was refuelled this week when I heard about the Dove advert featuring a black woman taking off her top to reveal a white woman. That bit was okay. I’m all for a product that can create different women simply by rubbing them with it. I watched the advertisement in its entirety and felt my outrage waning. This was just a series of women of different races taking their tops off. So I went back online and read a few comments sections until my outrage was burning brightly and fiercely once again. And, unhappily, all was not well with the world once again.

  While sitting at home alone one night this week, my outrage bubbling and festering as it does every night, it occurred to me that Dove might not be the only product doing its damnedest to foment division and hostility among we, the people. And so, come dawn, I set out to the nearest mall to see for myself what other horrors lurked on our shelves.

  I had barely set foot in the godless place when I came across a restaurant. Your Sole Provider, said the sign with a nod and a wink. I wasn’t in the mood for nodding or winking. As an atheist, I was outraged that I was now forced to contend with not only a poor pun, but also the misplaced notion that humans had souls that needed to be nurtured. Later, I googled the words “soul provider” and an appalling man called Michael Bolton thrust his leather-clad hips into my face.

  Lurking alongside the fish place was Pizzaman. I was immediately offended. Where is Pizzawoman? Pummelling dough in the back room and making sure Pizzaboy does his homework while trying to explain to Pizzagirl why her Pizzafilth boyfriend is bad news? I’ll buy one when they change their name to Pizzaperson. Maybe.

  Next to that was the Spur. The Michigan Spur. Named after an American state that is home to one of the most berserk right-wing militias in the country and featuring stained-glass images of a Native American chief while offering “bottomless ribs” to the casual passer-by. Listen brother, them ribs? They gonna reach yer bottom sooner or later.

  Moving on, I passed a bank. It had a sign up. Opening hours. That’s pretty damn timeist. What if my hours don’t coincide with yours? That’s the end of your business right there. You want my money? Fine. Fit in with my hours. And what do you mean no helmets? No smoking? No firearms? Guide dogs only? Oh, but you have Wi-Fi. I don’t care. Wi-Fi is only fun when you have guns and weed and mad dogs jumping on the furniture.

  My outrage nudging the red, I got to a bookshop. I’ve been published but a lot of people haven’t. It’s insensitive of bookshops to publicly display thousands of titles knowing that there are people whose day will be ruined by being reminded that their writing will never be good enough to be published. Bookshops need to ply their sick trade out of the public eye. Stop raising false hopes. And stop charging the equivalent of a week’s worth of groceries for a shitty novel.

  Next up was Food Lover’s Market. An offensive name to bulimics. I went inside to find an entire wall covered in tubes filled with nuts. Nuts. Offensive to mad people. The back section was jammed with farmyard animals in various forms of mutilation. Offensive to vegetarians. There were plastic bags filled with half lambs for R900. What kind of family needs half a lamb all in one go? It used to be a couple of chops. Maybe a shank. Now it’s half the animal? How big is your braai? How fatty is your liver?

  I saw a pamphlet taped to a fridge. “Pork you can trust”, it promised. Truth. A pig has never betrayed me. Not once. Pigs don’t lie. I trust the pig more than I trust anyone in this chain of carnage.

  Outraged, I walked into a clothing store to calm down. Men on the right, women on the left, children in the middle, babies in the corner. How very dare they assign us in such a brutal manner? Women have endless racks of clothing, all of which are too small or too big or just plain why-don’t-you-go-wait-in-the-car wrong.

  I want to be able to walk into a bar on a hot summer’s day wearing a yellow skirt and a floppy wide-brimmed hat without being punched in the head. I googled who invented pants and the oracle from hell spewed up a weird mishmash of answers ranging from Chinese pastoralists to Jesus. Women have a massive range of apparel and accessories to choose from. Men have long pants, short pants and shirts. The entire notion of clothing is discriminatory and needs to be abolished at once.

  Pulsating with outrage, I moved deeper into the belly of the beast. Into the children’s section. Blue for boys, pink for girls. Why is this still allowed? My sister got to wear frilly stuff with sparklies on the front and went to ballet to dance with other white girls she’d never met. I got to wear browns with grenades on the front and went to Angola to kill black men I’d never met. It seemed somehow unfair.

  Blinded by tears of outrage, I found myself in the bedding section. Among the mattress protectors. We live in a country where mattresses get better protection that the citizens.

  In the food section I was surrounded by Pink Lady and Granny Smith apples. Where are the Brown Gentleman and Grandpa Mbeki apples? This is racist. And it’s not just the fruit, either. Butter lettuce. Make up your mind. Are you butter or lettuce? You can’t be both. And the infants. Baby marrow, baby carrots, baby spinach. Don’t buy them. They need to grow up and take responsibility for their actions.

  Cultured yoghurt? Well, excuse me. Play some Mozart and we’ll talk. Caesar dressing? Sounds like the bandage they put on Julius after he was stabbed. FutureLife? What exactly are you promising here? That there’s a life after this one? And that I should at least have enough self-respect to get into shape for that one because I’ve clearly left it too late for this one? Fair enough. They call it Smart Food. All my life I’ve been eating Stupid Food and it’s too late to stop now.

  I went ove
r to the body care aisle and hit the motherlode. The company that caused all the trouble. Dove. A company that named itself after a bird that will walk into your lounge and shag right there in front of you before going off to sit on the curtain rail for a week because it doesn’t understand that it can go out the same way it came in.

  I came across a display that said, “Discover new baby Dove!” It didn’t say what was wrong with the old baby Dove. Perhaps it turned white babies black.

  I found a rack of toilet paper called Baby Soft. I was outraged. Babies look soft but they aren’t. Have a baby fall on your head from a reasonable height and you’ll know all about it.

  Gripe water? Is this the stuff white people drink and then complain for 24 hours?

  On my way out I passed a shelf stacked with bags full of what looked like roughly chopped cocaine. It was in the health foods section. Below it was a picture of a bunch of happy Labrador puppies. The sign said, “Xylitol is deadly toxic to dogs.”

  I continue to be outraged.

  FREE LAND, FAT LIES AND WHORES FOR ALL

  A tsunami of want is once again engulfing the country. I want to go on holiday. I want a new car. I want a divorce. Everyone wants something at the end of the year. From selling bits of seaweed tied together to vaguely resemble a crucifix, to putting your house on Airbnb and sleeping in the bushes, people are trying their damnedest to get whatever they can out of the season of giving.

  I’m no good at handicrafts, so I put my house on Airbnb. I’m sleeping in a rented shack in the bushes, which is a step up from the bushes themselves. I provide guests with two complementary beers and a bag of nits … not nits, nuts. They get plenty of nits from sleeping in my bed. So beers and nuts, then. Plus free Wi-Fi. This is fine when the guests are a Baptist couple and their oddly silent child. It’s a different story when enormous, sprawling Netflix and porn-addicted families occupy my home like German troops occupying Paris. But the Germans didn’t use up all of France’s bloody data in three nights, did they? Or smash the ornamentals in running battles between the triplets and the twins. Or offend the neighbours with their drunken carousing. Well, I suppose Holland was a bit offended.

  I was under the impression I had uncapped Wi-Fi until the Visigoths checked in. Apparently not. Apparently I am approaching my limit of 20GB. Very soon I will enter SoftCap mode. It sounds rather lovely. I imagine SoftCap mode would entail a gradual slowing down of things. A blurring of the edges. A gentle hushing of harsh sounds. But, like so many weasel words in the corporate world, it means quite the opposite. Within moments of SoftCap engaging, the Visigothlets will begin howling and flinging their tablets across the lounge. There will be at least one decapitation. Later, moans of displeasure will emanate from the master bedroom – my bedroom – as Mr and Mrs Visigoth hunch over a shuddering, buffering video of seven people and a barnyard animal until they can take it no longer and are forced to turn to one another and use their depleted imaginations for better or worse.

  I don’t care, quite frankly. But since I do offer Wi-Fi, at some point they, or the people who come after them, will complain. Why’s your Wi-Fi so slow? Darryl can’t watch the rugby. Yes, he can. There’s a television set in front of you. With full DStv. Ja, but he likes to live-stream it while lying in bed. I swear, I’ll come over there and burn my own house to the ground. With you and Darryl inside.

  It’s okay, though. I’m not going to tell guests to control their urges because my Wi-Fi is capped. I’m not one of those people who gives R10 to a beggar and then tells him not to spend it on drugs. Do these tight-lipped self-appointed arbiters of right and wrong even know how much drugs cost these days?

  I don’t mind topping up my data to feed their filthy addiction to the internet. I do, however, mind having to deal with Telkom. I mind on a massive scale. In theory one can do this topping up of data by visiting the mythical online Customer Portal. In reality this is a portal to the very bowels of hell itself. After being sent from pillar to page reconfirming one’s identity, one eventually comes up against the electronic equivalent of Charon, the boatman who transports the souls of the freshly dead across the river Styx. He doesn’t recognise your username or your password. Laughing cruelly, he gives you a number to call. People think 666 is the number of the Beast. It’s not. The number is 10210. I crossed myself, sprinkled a little holy tequila on my hands, had two Bloody Marys and plunged in. After negotiating a menu more confusing than anything you might find in a Cambodian restaurant, the music began. Deceptively upbeat for a funeral dirge. Who died? Hope. That’s who. Hope of ever getting through to someone capable of giving me a happy ending. I bought half a million rand’s worth of airtime and made myself comfortable. Telkom shouldn’t assume I’ll be the first to crack. I can stay on hold for nine years.

  And moving on to that other nasty business that occurred in the enchanting suburb of Nasrec. Well done to Squirrel Ramaphosa, then. To the presidency born, albeit through a relatively painless caesarean section. For the easily confused and those with the comprehensive skills of your average grade-four pupil, I use caesarean here as a literary device analogous to not only the portentous birth of Julius Caesar, but also the political assassination of the Roman dictator who, in this case, is represented by Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, with the opportunistic quisling Brutus being David Mabuza or Ace Magashule and the conspiratorial senators the delegates from KwaZulu-Natal. Obviously.

  The human melodrama that unfolded on the boulevard of broken dreams has sparked a wildfire of polemical pontificating, and there isn’t much I can add. Well, there is, but I choose not to. A couple of things caught my eye, though. The ANC has resolved to press for the full decriminalisation of prostitution, for both buyers and sellers alike. There will be a national debate on the issue. A mass debate, if you will. I apologise. I am possessed by the Christmas spirit and will in all likelihood require an exorcism once this is over.

  Oh, and there was a scuffle in the plenary over a proposal for the expropriation of land without compensation. It’s understandable. A lot of the delegates were going into withdrawal by then. Daytime drinking is what makes this country what it is and it was nothing short of a human rights violation to deprive those brave men and women of their traditional muti.

  So there you have it. Free education, loads of land, a muzzled media and hookers for all. The ANC National Executive Committee – making South Africa great again.

  As for Telkom, I’m still on hold.

  HIGHER EDUCATION FOR THE LOWEST COMMON DENOMINATOR

  One of the challenges I have set myself in the new year is to get off the couch quicker. The springs – in both couch and legs – have slowly deteriorated and it takes an almost superhuman effort for me to go from sitting to standing in under five minutes. I want to bring it down to a minute. That will give me an extra four minutes of staring into the fridge wondering what I got up for.

  This is not the only area in which I hope to up my game. I also plan on going to university so that I may add another string to my bow. What does that even mean? I can’t imagine anything more useless than a bow with a plethora of strings. Wouldn’t it make more sense to want to add another arrow to your quiver? That way, even if you didn’t have a bow you could still stab people with your arrows. But I imagine most of us go to university so we don’t have to make a living from stabbing. Diversification is key, though, and a little tidy knife-work on weekends could go a long way towards supplementing any student’s meagre income.

  I’m not yet sure which university I shall attend. Or even what degree I will do. It doesn’t really matter. Julius Malema says that if you can’t afford to study, you should just arrive at your nearest university and pull up a chair. Commandeer a locker, claim a girl, borrow a pencil and there you go.

  Thing is, university only really appeals to me in the sense that institutions of higher learning are hotbeds of sex, drugs and all-night parties. The business of studying and writing exams doesn’t particularly interest me. Besides, given the couch issue I’ll
probably be late for most of my lectures, if I make them at all.

  I have done my time in the hallowed halls of academia … okay, that’s not strictly true. There was nothing hallowed about the journalism department at Natal Technikon in the 1980s. I did find my first love there, though. I also found the Normandy Hotel, which was a stone’s throw from Oldham House where the journalism students were kept isolated from the rest of the campus.

  Right, then. This year there were 370 000 applications for 39 000 places at six universities.

  The EFF leadership will be waiting to welcome you to the institution of your choice. When registration day turns into the battle of Stalingrad, Dr Ndlozi and his foot soldiers will take the blows and teargas on your behalf, giving you a chance to make it to the nearest lecture hall where you can plant your metaphysical flag of freedom, take a member of faculty hostage and demand he teaches you everything he knows.

  It doesn’t particularly matter what degree you find yourself doing. The important thing is that after three years, or, if you’re easily distracted, eight or nine, you can put the letters BA after your name. The counter-revolutionary elites will say this stands for Bugger All. Ignore them. By the time you graduate it will mean Beast Alliance. You will be the awesome stormtroopers of the new, new South Africa, providing by sheer force of numbers the opportunity for the elite masters and the PhDs to storm the citadels of power.

  Somewhere among the ravening hordes rampaging across campuses on their desperate quest for knowledge, perhaps lurking on the fringes if not in the shadows, will be Nicholas Brinkmann and his ilk. I have not selected Nicholas for any reason other than that he appeared on Twitter at this very moment. There are others like him. To find them I would need to do research and I don’t get paid enough for that.