He asked me if I wanted to go home with him, but I was craving drugs. I refused his offer and said I wanted to go home. For a moment he didn’t say a word but just stared at my private parts. I was afraid that maybe he was thinking of cutting it off and taking it home with him, since I had refused to go home with him. My craving for drugs became stronger, and I started feeling sick. I begged him to let me go now that I had given him what he wanted. He said, ‘Okay, get dressed,’ and gave me a towel to wipe my private parts. We both got dressed and while he was busy on his phone, he asked me if I needed anything to drink. The only thing I wanted was to get high. I said, ‘Yes I’d like something to drink on my way home.’ He asked me where home was but I didn’t want to tell him that I lived under the bridge since he had already taken advantage of me and I didn’t know what he would do next. I told him that I was from Port Shepstone, but I lived in downtown Joburg. He told me that he grew up in KwaZulu-Natal and that he owned a beach house at Uvongo.
We made our way out of the office to the parking lot. He opened the boot of his car and took out R600 from his wallet. Before he gave it to me he made me promise to keep it between us and not to tell a soul about what had happened in his office. I was surprised because he had told me earlier that he had left his wallet in the office. I became clear to me that he had been doing ‘this’ for some time and that he knew how to make people believe him. He asked me if that was enough and told me that he would’ve paid me twice that amount if I were willing to go home with him. Yes, I needed the money but that man seemed to have forgotten that he did all those sexual acts against my will and I was craving drugs and could no longer go on without them. I told him to drop me off at Constitution Hill. He didn’t mind taking me there. Before we said goodbye he gave me his business card and told me to call if I needed anything. I was surprised to see from his card that he was the General Human Resource Manager of one of South Africa’s biggest state-owned companies.
And yes, I used the R600 that guy paid me to buy drugs. Let me break it down for you – I had a few hundred rands that I didn’t know what to do with except to smoke it. I went straight to our secret location in Hillbrow (The Sense) to get some good stuff. I bought ten bags of nyaope valued at R20 each, ten rocks valued at R20 each, ten fake cigarettes valued at 50c each, a pack of rolling papers for R4, a skens (dry weed leaves) and two match boxes for R1. I felt like I owned the world with all those drugs to myself.
The thing about drugs is they make you greedy. When you’re new in the game you might have a smoking partner, but when you’re addicted, you avoid others. If you do happen to sit together everyone smokes his or her own stuff – we call it the every kid plays with his own toy game. I went to my corner in the park where the other addicts chilled and made my joint and smoked. I melted a rock in my glass pipe and I smoked it and felt like I was in a new body. Then I crushed the weed and mixed it with some cigarette tobacco (skens ne mix), poured it onto a rolling paper and arranged it nicely before unwrapping the nyaope and carefully pouring it on my skens ne mix.
I rolled the joint nicely, making sure that I wet it with saliva to make it last for a long time and to prevent the wind from causing it to burn faster. After smoking that joint, I felt like I would live forever. I didn’t care where I was or who was next to me, I felt like I was the only guy in the world. I felt sleepy but knew that if I closed my eyes I would be robbed blind and that I would wake up with not a cent or anything to smoke. Rock was the only solution. Rock is like an energiser – it gives you energy you didn’t know you had. You can fight until you kill your opponent or die after smoking rock. You can dance until morning after smoking rock. Even when having sex, you can go until your partner begs you for mercy! It is one of the best performance enhancers. I took out my glass pipe and melted a precious rock and smoked it. After that I felt like I was Superman. I didn’t feel sleepy any more. I had enough energy to walk from Hillbrow back to Braamfontein without feeling tired or thinking about what Mr Train had done to me.
I still had some change from the R600 but I didn’t buy anything to eat when I made it back under the bridge. The guys were busy bragging about who made the most money and bought the most drugs that day. Sure, I had more drugs than most of them but I didn’t want to join their stupid bragging game because then they would ask me for drugs or steal my money later that night. The only stupid mistake I made was to become a drug addict, but I still had brains in my head. I was smarter than that – I knew that their attention came at a price.
I was already sick from drug cravings and now I felt even sicker about what had happened with Mr Train. I had read in the Encyclopaedia of Sexual Knowledge that it is not easy to stop homosexual tendencies if you experience them in your adult life. I didn’t want to think too much, I wanted to leave that experience in the past where it belonged. I didn’t really want to go into the deeper details of what had happened; maybe I was scared to find out the truth. My main concern was to smoke enough until I healed from the encounter. So I rolled another joint, spiced it up with the mixture of heroin and whatever else they mix with it to make nyaope. Most of us didn’t even know what was mixed together to make nyaope. We only knew that it made us feel good. To tell you the truth, I didn’t even know how it was spelt till I started working on this book. I didn’t want to heat a rock because it would keep me up all night, and the last thing I needed was to stay up all night thinking about what happened in that office that day. Luckily, I fell asleep shortly after that last joint.
The next morning, I still had drugs left over and some change, so I decided not to sell books on Empire Road that day. I knew that the crazy gay man in the white Mercedes would come looking for me. I knew that he was thinking about me. I spent the day under the bridge smoking drugs, reading my book, falling asleep, waking up and smoking again. I only went out to buy amagwinya (fat cakes) and some fruit. In the afternoon when the boys came back from the hustling game they asked me why I hadn’t hustled that day. When I told them I was not feeling well, they laughed at me and said that I would smoke not being well then. They didn’t know that I had something to smoke.
The next morning I went to fetch water from the broken meter so I could wash and go sell books on Empire Road. When I got there three hours later, Siyabonga came to tell me that he knew why I hadn’t come to sell my books the previous day and it was because I had found myself a bitch. He said the white Mercedes SLK had come looking for me and that he knew the guy behind the wheel. He said there are many male prostitutes who sleep with men for money to buy drugs. They are isolated and are always being bullied and called names, and that he didn’t want to see me being labelled as one of them because it would make my life extra hard.
The next day I sold only in the morning but then I realised that I couldn’t hide from him forever. The following day I decided to go to his workplace to tell him that he had abused me and I would report the matter to the police if he ever came looking for me again. So I woke up early and made sure that I didn’t look like I was living under the bridge. After bathing, I spent more than an hour making sure that I looked my best, combing my hair, brushing my teeth before and after my morning joint, then rushing down to Parktown to sell my books.
I talked to as many people as I could, trying to sell as many books as fast as I could, knowing that I didn’t have the whole day because I had to confront him before he could come back again. What if the next time he were to ask a guy like Bongani, then I could lose my sleeping place or worse, the spot where I sold my books. Because he kept coming back asking for me, I would be labelled a sex trader and bullies like Bongani would be more than happy to get rid of me by burning my books or like what happened to this other guy called Jack who was stoned to death because he wouldn’t surrender his drugs to drug addict bullies just like Bongani.
I had a friend who worked at Wits University – I don’t know her name – but she drives the same red Porsche she drove back then because sometimes I see her driving past me in Greenside. She gave me a
bag with some books in it to sell and made my life easier that day. The bag she gave me looked much nicer than the old bag I carried my books in. I wanted to look my best because I was going to go to that guy’s workplace. I did not want to be called a hobo and get thrown out by the security guards. If a boss says, ‘Security, come throw this man outside’, it makes them very happy to oblige. Most security guards are black and black people derive joy from making blacks feel pain. They become powerful, in deed and imagination.
When I got to Mr Train’s workplace, the receptionist called his personal assistant who told me that her boss was out of town but would be back soon. She gave me his contact number written on a piece of paper. I should have gone to the police station to open a case the first day, but I was afraid and embarrassed. I knew the police liked making fun of people with cases like me. I was embarrassed to even talk about it to my closest friend Siyabonga. Today I still find it hard to talk about and I feel dirty when I think about it, because in my Bible sodomy is a capital sin.
Eventually I did open a case against him, but the justice system failed me. The company he worked for protected him. The investigating officer for my case told me the case was closed because the man had appeared in court but I never showed up. The investigating officer knew the spot where I sold books on Empire Road and had met me there more than twice but claimed he didn’t know where to find me on the day I was due in court. The court decided to let him walk free on his first appearance without hearing my side of the story. The office where he worked has CCTV cameras in the building and I want to know why the videos were never used. That’s what money can do for you in South Africa. You can get away with almost everything. The company he worked for cared only about protecting their name. I didn’t have the kind of legal team that he had and I had failed to show up for my court date. This whole case was like one of Lee Child’s Jack Reacher thrillers. The prosecutor told me to forget about the whole rape thing and move on with my life because it was just my word against his. What I need in my life is to forget about the whole experience and I suppose there is a form of justice at work because he was fired with immediate effect. Though he tried fighting it at the CCMA (Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration), he didn’t get re-instated.
A bend in the river and things start to change
BONGANI, THAT HEARTLESS BULLY, showed up at Empire Road while I was thinking about what had happened with Mr Train. I knew he would order me to stand under the tree until he finished begging. It was like I read his mind because that was the first thing he said when he opened his mouth. I didn’t mind because I expected it. I packed my books and left him in peace for a while. I didn’t like the idea of standing under the tree and waiting for his permission before I could continue selling so after a while I went back to Empire Road to see if the big boss was done begging. Fortunately he had gone – only Siya and Dimamzo were left. Dimamzo’s newspapers were sold out and Siya was taking it easy that afternoon and was busy bragging about what a striker he was and how much money he had. I was the only one who hadn’t made money that afternoon.
He advised me that we had to quit drugs and gave me some tips. I asked him that, if he knew an easy way out of drug addiction, why he wasn’t taking it and becoming a free man again. The only easy and painless way out, he said, was to drink lots of alcohol so that you only wake up with a hangover and not that painful craving for drugs. He told me that it works for some people but not for others, although if you were a new addict chances were good that it could work for you. I liked his idea – after all the tears I cried every night and all my prayers, there was still hope and a way out. For me being an alcoholic is still being a drug addict, but an organised one, because alcohol is a legal drug, and if you drink responsibly you can still enjoy life and succeed.
When you’re an addict of illegal drugs there’s no such a thing as getting high responsibly – you get high, you want more – there’s no limit. I’m not praising alcohol, but if you drink alcohol, you don’t have to worry about the police, except if you’re a drunken driver. With the kind of drugs I was using, you had to avoid a policeman and his sniffer dog, so for me being an alcoholic would be much better than being a drug addict.
Don’t get it twisted. Just like cocaine, crack, weed, tik, heroin, or the master destroyer nyaope, I know that alcohol can seriously damage your mental health, your looks, or get you into serious financial trouble. Being drunk and risky sexual behaviour are best friends and can cause you to get infected with HIV or any other sexually transmitted diseases. For a girl it can lead to even more problems – a girl can get both sexually transmitted diseases and have an unplanned pregnancy, after just a few drinks. People who are drunk always insist that they are okay. When you’re drunk you automatically become a target for criminals, which is why people get robbed, raped, attacked or hijacked mostly when they’re drunk. Teens can agree to have sex with more than one guy, or even strangers, and get videotaped, all because they had one too many drinks. When the tapes go viral, it often leads to the suicide of those involved.
But I looked on the bright side. You know why I decided that alcohol was better than all those drugs I used? Alcohol can be enjoyable. Out there are many successful people like lawyers, doctors, entrepreneurs, politicians and celebrities who drink alcohol to celebrate certain special occasions. Those are the successful alcoholics. Some of them know their limit but some just don’t know when to stop.
Something that I have realised is that a mistake some people make is to think that drug addicts and alcoholics are only underachievers. Just because they made some stupid mistake and started doping or drinking nonstop they are called good-for-nothings. I don’t call them good-for-nothing, what I do is pray for them; honestly I believe that they can still change and make this world a better place. All they need is a push in the right direction. They need your help, good people!
God is God no matter what you call him in your language, and God doesn’t make mistakes. When you see people who are lost, or need your help, and you call them all sorts of names like good-for-nothing or useless, do yourself a favour and look in the mirror and tell me what you see. All those people who you drive or walk past every day and think of them with so little regard are also images of God just like you are, and they make mistakes, just like you do.
How would you like to be called a good-for-nothing, useless thing because you made one silly mistake that changed your life forever? This is life, not a novel. You have read so far because you want to know more about things you never cared about before. You bought this good book, so be honest with yourself, and answer that question. You’re here to learn more about things you see every day. We’ve seen highly successful people and super talented superstars lose their lives, fame and fortune because of drugs and alcohol. Some are still alive but doing time behind bars. Some are eating sardines when they used to eat sushi. Are they all good-for-nothing useless things, or did they simply make some stupid mistakes? Just like we all do sometimes.
But let me get back to that day.
I didn’t make many sales for the rest of the day but I managed to sell two books to a lady who gave me R200 and told me to keep the change. For a drug addict who lived under the bridge, that was a lot of money to make in less than three hours. I had been listening to Siyabonga for most of the time and sold the books a few minutes after he left.
I packed my books and walked slowly up to Hillbrow. From that afternoon I decided to drink two beers every time I smoked to see if Siyabonga’s idea would work for me. I bought enough stuff to cover me for the rest of the night and next morning. I went straight to my corner at the Smoker’s Paradise (that’s what we called the park where we used to smoke). Then I had two beers at a nearby tavern to kill time – I had nothing better to do, and a tavern was warmer than under the bridge. Beer didn’t taste as good as it used to after not drinking for such a long time. I felt like I would vomit. I knew Siyabonga really wanted to help me. As I drank the beer that I wasn’t even enjo
ying I hoped my friend’s idea would really help me win over my drug addiction. I believed him. He had smoked drugs for many years before I ever thought of trying them. He always told me not to waste my life like he wasted his with drugs, especially nyaope. I knew he knew what he was talking about.
I wanted ‘out’ with the drugs, but alcohol was not the easy way out that I thought it was. Alcohol only made things worse. Alcohol led me to almost take own my life. The thing about drugs is that they made me happy because I could forget about my problems. That day I was about to discover that alcohol depressed me and made me think more deeply about my problems.
I hadn’t made too many sales so I left my street corner early. The sun was hot and Siyabonga wasn’t hustling on Empire so it was a boring day. I went to Hillbrow to score like I did every day. After getting high, I decided to buy beers with the change I had. My clothes were clean. I didn’t smell like I was from the streets. The bag that I carried my books in was clean. Nobody could tell that I was homeless.
I was already high so I didn’t need a lot to get drunk. After a few beers alcohol showed me flames. It was the boss and in comparison, I was just a small boy. I played some of my favourite songs on the jukebox. I played a song called ‘Go on and Cry’ by Bloodstone that caused me so much sadness and depression. I sang along as loud as I could and people looked at me like I was crazy. Maybe they thought a girl had dumped me because the song is about a failed relationship.
The Pavement Bookworm Page 5
