A post on unrequited love

While I was thinking what to write for today’s post, my mind dug up one of my favourite quotes from one of my favourite authors, Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

The quote’s from one of his novellas called Memories of my Melancholy Whores. I read it about four years ago because my boss at the time bought it at a CNA before we boarded a flight to Cape Town.

 

 

The guy was really fucked up in a lot of ways, but was also a lot of fun. He basically only read books that had some kind of smutty angle and so bought the Marquez book based purely on its title.

We used to work out of a small house in a complex on Grayston Drive in a team of three people, and so I was often left totally alone in the house while my two bosses were out ‘interviewing’ people for the ‘report’ we were working on for an esteemed in-flight magazine.

It took me three or four days to read Memories of my Melancholy Whores, but that novella has had a profound effect on my life.

The story is about a 90 year old man who has only ever slept with whores his whole life. The guy is hung like a mule, but unfortunately is really, really ugly and so finds it impossible to bed normal women.

Obviously as he gets older his appetite for sex decreases and when the novella starts, he hasn’t been with a prozzy for at least a decade.

However, on his 90th birthday he decides to contact his friend, the mistress of his favourite whore house, and ask her a favour. As a birthday present to himself he wants to sleep with a virgin.

Miraculously the old man can still get it up and so, after much debate, the mistress decides to help the old man out and actually finds a 13 year old girl who needs the money desperately and so sets everything up.

Because it’s the girl’s first time, the mistress gives her a powerful kind of sedative to relax her, but gets the dose completely wrong and so when the old man enters the bedroom to deflower his prize, he finds her naked on the bed and fast asleep.

 

 

Watching her lying there like that, something miraculous happens. The old man falls completely in love with her. She looks so innocent and so pure, this young girl poised at the brink of becoming a woman, that he doesn’t even touch her that first night, he just watches her sleeping until it starts becoming light outside, then quietly leaves.

There’s a lot more to the story, but you’ll have to read it to find out the rest and I strongly recommend that you do, but the line that really stuck with me goes like this:

‘The invincible power that has moved the world is unrequited, not happy, love.’

It’s weird that my mind dug up that quote because it’s been years since I last experienced the all-consuming feeling that is unrequited love.

And yet, it’s not something you forget easily. Even as I write this at least three or four girls spring to mind that at different times in my life, I was completely in love with and either too afraid to admit it, or even worse, they knew how I felt and just weren’t that into me.

 

 

The weirdest case was a blonde girl who used to hang out in our circle of friends post-varsity, we’ll call her Jacqui.

I’d met her a few times, I thought she was smoking hot but that was about it. Then this one night at The Doors in Edenvale we were all sitting on the upstairs balcony and the weirdest thing happened.

I was talking about how varsity sets you up nicely for life because of the simple fact that it teaches you how to digest and understand massive amounts of information. It was a really boring topic of conversation, but the next thing I knew sweet, blue-eyed, blonde-haired little Jacqui sprang to life and spent the next 15 minutes passionately agreeing with me.

I have no idea how the fuck she did it, but during those 15 minutes I fell completely in love with her. To this day I still can’t explain it, but I fell for her so hard and fast that I remember standing by the bar moments later, my heart racing, knocking back as much booze as I could stomach to try and calm down and think straight.

Peggles was with me that night and I remember cornering him at one stage and trying to explain what this girl was doing to me while intermittently punching the wall and eating the ice out of my empty drink.

I felt ill. I drank some more. I don’t think I spoke another word to her the whole night but I so badly wanted to. I watched her dancing for a long time, trying desperately to think up some way to approach her, but… how?

I collapsed in bed that night, drunk and alone, but couldn’t sleep and when I eventually did, I swear I dreamed of her.

But the weirdest thing is I saw her about a week later and felt nothing.

I felt nothing. I mean, had she initiated anything, I would have happily reciprocated, but she didn’t and I just got this feeling like even if I made a move, she wouldn’t be interested and so just as quickly as I fell completely in love with her, I fell completely out of love with her.

Most of the girls I’ve fallen for don’t know I fell for them, well, to my knowledge at least and I wouldn’t change that if I could go back and do it all over again.

Even though it tore me up a lot of the time that some of the girls I was into felt rocks for me, I was also keenly aware of the fact that in many cases, love moves in circles ie. the person you’re chasing is chasing someone else who is chasing someone else and so on.

Also, it felt good to move the world.

It’s all part of one system, it’s all energy being transferred from one form into another into another into another. Love is a powerful form of energy and yes, I might have poured a lot of it out there needlessly, but I guess what I want to say is this: it comes back.

-ST

Underneath the surface

We tried a couple of times, definitely more than once, to get the picture right, but it wasn’t easy. Above the surface you just point the camera at where experience has taught you your faces should be and hit the shutter button and that usually does the trick.

Underneath the surface, everything is different. You’re doing a whole bunch of things at the same time, holding your breath, trying to swim down, trying to keep your face next to hers, trying to smile, trying not to make too many bubbles.

 

 

Underneath the surface, the sound is different, your heart beats harder in your ears. You look at her, the way her hair floats like an angel’s hair, and her arms and legs move slow, graceful as a mermaid.

Underneath the surface everything is somehow better, but you can’t stay here brother. A few seconds, maybe a minute or two, that’s all you got. Any longer and you’ll stay here, underneath the surface and the world will never know the secrets you hold in your ghostly heart.

I’ve loved every second of this weekend, God knows.

Friday we had our off site day, which was pretty cool. We got the lowdown on the company, important for the noobs, but to be honest I’d heard at least 80% of it before.

The skies opened in the afternoon, menacing and black, and it poured down for a bit. Poonay gave me a lift back home as J-Rab had the car. I asked J-Rab to get us some stuff for the office party that was happening later, then kicked back, did some reading and had a snooze.

The office party was incredibly SICK. We went to Rodizios, this restaurant in the Leaping Frog centre in Fourways. The theme was Rio Carnival – J-Rab went with feathers in her hair and sparkly sticker-things in flower patterns on her face. She looked hot.

 

 

We both wore these plastic wreaths of flowers for necklaces and I went with a mask on that looked a bit like a headdress with big feathers coming off the top.

Definitely gay, but it suited the theme and I wasn’t banking on wearing it for long, just when we arrived and for a few pics afterwards.

I had this feeling the minute after I woke up from my nap like electricity was pumping through my body and I swear I couldn’t sit, stand or even fucking lie still.

I get this way sometimes where I bounce off the walls like loose shrapnel, I can’t control myself AT ALL, it’s like I’ve tapped into this stream of energy that is boundless and it’s just pouring into me, like water from a ruptured dam wall.

It’s also infectious as hell. I’m like a catalyst in a chemical reaction and if I’m around the right people, it starts setting them off one by one.

Back in varsity we called it the ‘infectious craziness’. Once it infected one of us, the others would all succumb sooner or later.

 

 

It’s the most fucking awesome feeling in the whole world. You are literally unstoppable, full of mischief and ready to party until you self combust in a blazing ball of fire on the dancefloor.

I drank. I encouraged other to drink too. I jiggled uncontrollably in my seat, I boogied on down, I ate as much food as I could handle, and then I drank some more.

After we’d all eaten dinner, they started calling all the people who’s birthdays it was on stage as well as the big tables that were there for year end functions.

Our table got called and I shot onto stage so fast I nearly knocked my chair over backwards.

I was ready for anything. Fuck, release the lions, the mood I was in, I would have wrestled those fuckers to the ground and torn their throats out with my teeth.

Turns out they’d called us all up there for a dancing competition. Game on. I immediately started hopping up and down like a boxer loosening up for a fight, throwing a few punches, twisting left and right, stretching my neck muscles.

The music started and I sauntered into the middle of the stage and started whipping out the most porno dance moves I could muster, but just as I was getting into it, they stopped the music, said something about the judges having a hard time choosing a winner and that we were going to go another round.

Fuck that shit. I was killing those other fuckers! Hardly anyone was even moving away from the back and side walls of the stage into the middle to dance, never mind actually putting some effort into it.

I made up my mind then and there to fuck that puppy to hell and back.

The music started up again and I launched into this weird jumping-up-and-down-whilst-pumping-my-fists-in-the-air move as I made my way into centre stage. Then once there I kinda flailed around a bit before my mind locked onto the dance move to destroy all dance moves.

The Saturday Night Fever Disco Finger Pointing Dance Move. I ripped into that move for all it was worth, throwing my hip out like I was trying to dislocate it while pointing diagonally up and the ceiling, my opposite hand firmly on my hip.

 

 

Three people’s heads exploded the second I whipped that one out and five women watching instantly became pregnant. All I heard was my name being chanted somewhere at the far end of the room. A woman threw her panties on stage.

I had nailed it. The judges stood on no ceremony and handed me the bottle of champagne for first prize without even mentioning any of the other so-called ‘dancers’ on stage.

If there’s one thing about me you’ll learn in time, it’s that I love winning. I’m not a second-place kinda dude, it’s first place or nothing. The other thing is I’m not a graceful winner or a graceful loser. If I win I’ll dance around and shove it in your face, if I lose, I’ll bitch and moan, tell you you were lucky that time and yeah, you might have won, but you’re still ugly.

And so, it was no surprise to the people who knew me that the second they handed the champers over to me, I thrust it high in the air and taunted everyone on stage with it before popping it back at the table and taking a long swig straight from the neck.

Next day, J-Rab and I got up when the light was still white and new and went for a swim.

I told her about this bit I’d read in the book I’m reading right now ‘Stealing Fire From The Gods’, which is about becoming an excellent writer and understanding both the intricacies of story and human nature.

It has this really cool passage about Back to the Future, where it says that there’s no telling what effect one small act of courage can have on your life.

 

 

The example the author uses is how Michael J Foxes dad stands up to the school bully at the end of the movie and wins the affection of his future wife. This one small act has huge repercussions for Michael J Foxes dad and when ol’ Michael J goes back to the future, he finds his mom and dad are way better off than they were before.

The author goes on to say that for this reason, all of our actions should be governed by courage because there’s no telling how they could positively influence the future course of our lives.

And so from now on, I’m gonna consciously try and do something courageous every day, even if it’s something small, and I think you must do the same.

J-Rab and I spent about an hour yesterday just floating around on a lilo we found by the pool.

It was a huge lilo, I lay on my stomach and she lay on top of me and we just floated and laughed and enjoyed the sun and the cool water. We’d float to the edge and I’d push off as hard as I could with my hands or feet and we’d sail across the surface of the water, carefree in every way.

 

 

We’re passionately in love, J-Rab and I, and when we’re together and laughing and holding each other close I know what we have is the real deal. It’s love, it’s the cold and it’s the broken hallelujah that a lot of people can’t actually handle.

But J-Rab is different from other shallow and callous girls I’ve known in my life. She has the capacity to love me and understand me and is happy to let me be exactly who I am, a complete maniac, and she loves me for that.

Saturday’s sun set slowly and we went out for Sushi and rented How to lose Friends and Alienate People, a movie with Simon Pegg, Jeff Bridges and Megan Fox that is really rubbish.

I always feel cheated hiring DVDs, I mean, they’re never worth the 30 bucks we pay to rent them. I’m a pirate, I know it’s wrong, but movies are just so much more enjoyable when you don’t have to pay a cent to watch them.

Roll on Sunday and J-Rab and I are on a mission for mini doughnuts. They are both delicious and totally worth the 15 minute drive to the Rosebank Rooftop Market to get them.

Back at home, we made hay while the sun shone and it was good. I asked J-Rab what I could write about our sex life and she got all shy and said all I was allowed to say is that as a man, it’s important to date a woman with a sex drive that is equal to, or higher than yours or the relationship is destined to fail.

Sex should only be 10% of the relationship, but it’s the first 10%, always. The day that changes is the day the relationship starts getting old.

For some people this can happen 3 months into a relationship, for some it’s 3 years and for a lucky few, it’s 30 or even more.

I’m holding out for option three, I’m a firm believer of having your cake and eating it.

 

 

This is it, this is your life. Never settle for second best, you’re better than that. You’re incredible and unique, the world will try and fuck with that and put you down, but pay them no attention, they only want to see you fail to make themselves feel better about their shitty lives.

Never sink to that level. Rise above that. Have the courage flight requires and head straight for the sun and as you gain speed and flames start licking off your body, you’ll feel more alive than you’ve ever felt and you’ll leave a streak across the sky that countless generations will look upon in wonder.

So shine on you crazy diamond.

Shine on 🙂

-ST

You man the island

So I’m back from my sojourn in this new universe I’m building in my head. I took a day off yesterday and just got completely lost in a different world, fleshing it all out, meeting the characters.

You gotta ask yourself who they are, who their parents are, are they rich or poor? Are they well educated or stupid? Are they tall or short?

These questions, once you’ve answered them all, start acting as fuel for the inferno that is your story. They lend themselves naturally to situations that your characters find themselves in.

 

 

The character I’m working on currently has lain dormant inside my head since 2004. He’s different, it’s difficult to figure him out, he was human once, but he’s something else now and I’ve struggled for the last five years to find his voice.

But I’m getting close. I see him sometimes, in the early hours of the morning, he’s lying inert on a couch, watching stolen med student instructional videos. The screen flickers a ghostly blue colour while doctors perform surgical procedures on their patients.

He watches the scalpels do their thing, in some of the videos the procedures are simple and over in less than an hour, some of them take longer. In one video he watches a man undergoing spinal surgery, it’s a four-hour long operation.

 

 

He watches these videos when he can’t sleep. He tries to remember how it felt to be human.

He’s one of many characters that float around in my head. Problem is, like vampires, once you invite them in, they come and go whenever they like, sometimes lingering for weeks in there, half-alive at best.

I made a bar for them eventually, thought it up using the raw material of every bar I ever drank at. At least it gives them something to do – Lane and Bonjo, stoned and playing pool badly, Hank huge and calm, drinking Stroh Rum on the rocks, the Apache, Wagon Axel, sitting in the darkest corner, his eyes full of murder.

There’s a kid who found his way in here a few years back, babbling incoherently about this place he’d found, this island, a kind of Edenic paradise. I got to thinking about that kid this morning driving to work because we were listening to MGMT in the car.

“I’m feeling rough, I’m feeling raw, I’m in the prime of my life.
Let’s make some music, make some money, find some models for wives.
I’ll move to Paris, shoot some heroin, and fuck with the stars.
You man the island and the cocaine and the elegant cars.”

 

 

You man the island. This crazy, wild-eyed kid, that was his job. He’ll tell anyone who listens for five minutes or more. He used to man this gun turret, an old and rusted harbinger of death. He used to sit there, watching for red planes.

They told him when he first arrived that his job would be to man that gun and in time he would become a hero.

The red planes never came though and more often than not he shot seagulls down instead. It was a simple enough way to pass the time, but something about watching those birds explode into puffs of feathers filled him with satisfaction.

It was target practise.

But the thing that kept him coming back to that island was her. Her olive skin and jet black hair. Her blue eyes. The way she moved, her feet hardly touching the ground, her hips swaying, she oozed sex and he wanted her so bad he could taste it, even in his dreams.

He wished he was a hero, that crazy kid. He would kill to be a hero.

********************************************************************

Back in the real world, we’re all excited because today is our off site day and tonight is our office party.

Good times. I’ll resume transmission tomorrow, expect a fat, juicy one.

That’s what she said.

-ST

The Raddest Post Ever!

Today’s post is the raddest post ever! Some days you need long, rambling existential mind-fuck meandering, and some days, well, you just need hot mamasitas.

(I’m currently lost in a piece of fiction I’m teasing out and probably won’t get around to posting anything other than this today. Watch this space…)

So send this to every friend you know. Tell them it’s the raddest post you’ve ever read EVER and you’ll win a prize!

 

 

Party on Wayne.

-ST

*A stunning summer bikini

My Problem With The Interblags

I didn’t always used to be this way, blogging everyday, tweeting, interacting with my imaginary friends online. There used to be a time when I would meet people in the old fashioned way, by getting drunk in bars and clubs and simultaneously bludgeoning them with my opinions while beguiling them with my witty insights.

You’re on safe ground with drunks, they’re predictable. Not so with people you meet on the internet.

 

 

Problem with me is I just don’t trust my imaginary internet friends. How can you trust a person you’ve never met before? You can’t even begin to understand a person until you’ve shaken their hand, heard their voice, watched their mannerisms and looked into their eyes.

In a lot of cases, all you get over the internet is a facade. You get the character traits and virtues that person wants you to get. In this way people live out a kind of fantasy life online – the shy, mousy girl you knew back in highschool becomes a kinky dominatrix, the weedy, Star Wars-obsessed geek becomes a loud and brash, bullying anyone who would dare to challenge his thoughts and opinions.

 

 

Then you meet these people in the real world and surprise surprise, they not only have nothing to say, but they are nothing like the people they pretend to be online. It’s so lame!

And don’t even get me started on all the retards out there, trawling porn sites and leaving their badly-written, poorly punctuated comments like horse droppings all over this supposed ‘information super-highway’.

Hank Moody, David Duchovny’s character in Californication says it best. In season one he gets interviewed on Henry Rollins’ radio show about the blog he’s writing (completely against his will) and says the following about the online world:

“People they don’t write anymore, they blog. Instead of talking, they text. No punctuation, no grammar, LOL this and LMFAO that. It seems to me that it’s just a bunch of stupid people pseudo-communicating with a bunch of other stupid people in a proto-language that resembles more what cavemen used to speak than the King’s English.”

 

 

Amen brother.

If there’s one thing I strive toward every time I sit down to write for Them’s Fightin’ Words, it’s congruity. The person you’re reading is me. I’m just as loud, crazy and vitriolic in real life as I am on this blog and I don’t give a rat’s ass who can handle it and who can’t.

Having said that, I think it’s only fair that I mention that I’ve also been surprised by how many genuine and intelligent people there are out there using this powerful and twisted medium I like to call the Interblags.

We’re not in the majority here by any means, but there is a small community of thinking, feeling people out there with a healthy appreciation of irony who aren’t robots or retards and I can’t tell you how refreshing that is.

This blog is for you. It’s never going to be huge, for a lot of reasons I don’t want it to be, but it will always be here and so will I, so don’t be a stranger 😉

-ST

Nobody Take Today Seriously

Guys, please, for the love of god, nobody take today too seriously.

I have it on high authority that today is just fucking with us, just having a go, deliberately being facetious just to piss us all off, and so I urge you not to take today too seriously.

Here instead are things I think we should rather do today:

1. Take a long walk. Take deep breaths while you’re walking and concentrate on spending more time looking at the sky than looking at the ground. People don’t look up enough, they just look down at the ground and wonder why all their dreams keep dying.

 

 

2. Eat ice cream. When you were a kid you ate ice cream and it always made you feel better. Today you are going to eat some ice cream too, sitting on the sidewalk like you used to, and while you eat that ice cream, think about nothing except eating that ice cream.

 

 

3. Climb a tree. Trees are like huge, ancient dinosaurs. Even their bark is like rough dinosaur skin. Climb the biggest one you can find and hide in there until things get better. You’ll be surprised how quickly this happens.

 

 

4. Float. You can do this in one of two places, or if you’re feeling adventurous, do it in both of these two places: a) A swimming pool b) The bath. When you’re floating pretend you’re a piece of driftwood in a gigantic ocean and you don’t have to worry about anything except floating. If you’re outside, watch for birds while you float. They are constantly flying overhead, but nobody sees them because they never look up (see point 1.)

 

 

5. Sing. Inside everyone at all times there is a song playing whether it’s at the front of your mind or the back. Sing this song as loud as you can, completely tonelessly. Probably don’t do this at the office, but definitely do it while you’re driving home or when you’re in the shower. Actually, fuck it, do it in the office. If at least one person doesn’t smile or join in, quit your job and go work somewhere else.

 

 

6. Hug someone. When you hug someone, anyone, for long enough, things get better. Hug someone today. Warn them beforehand, explain that in a totally non-sexual way, you just need a hug, quite a long one, to feel better. It’s not weird to hug someone you hardly know, it’s a very human thing to do and you’ll probably make the person you’re hugging feel better too.

 

 

7. Remember that there’s a good chance that this is all one big joke. Many sources indicate that we are taking life far too seriously for our own good, and as such, are becoming prone to cancer and heart attacks. Take a minute to step outside of your life completely and zoom out, past the city blocks and suburbs and provinces and country borders and continents and Earth itself. Keep going until our entire solar system is just a tiny spec and ask yourself: Are all my problems still so big? Nope. And you’re suddenly not as important as you thought you were, you’re just a spec of dust, less than that, and that’s pretty cool cause as much as you might think you’re fucking shit up, you aren’t really.

And so that’s my blog post for today, Monday the 23rd of November. I hope you’ve enjoyed it and that you take it to heart and go out there and just be happy, cause yes, life is shitty sometimes, but it’s also the best thing we’ve ever known.

Buy some helium balloons. Let them go.

It’s that easy 🙂

-ST

Stikey

Somewhere back in time, Stikey and I were sitting in a kind of fort that we built out of tree branches, by a fire when he told me about the rabbit hole and how and where to find it.

Those early runs, we did a lot of them together, down into the hole, twisting through those crazy tunnels, digging new passages, unstoppable in every way.

Later he caught something down there, he got sick, those tunnels and the places they lead were full of spores and he just breathed in too many.

 

His grip on the world outside the Hole was lost and most of us, we thought he was done for.

But he fought back, he got back up by himself, and by himself he boarded the Hole up and bolted it shut, and hasn’t gone back since.

He’s smart, as adept at running a company as he is at fleecing you for every cent you have across a poker table. Money slides like mercury toward him and of all my friends, you bet your ass he will be the first to make a million.

There’s this line that Big Red used to say everytime he saw Stikey when we were growing up, it was a question, ‘Is he a Greek God, or a goddamn greek?’

The answer, I think, is that he’s both, which makes him a stand up guy to have on your side, but not a guy you’d want to fuck with if he isn’t.

Bright Sunshiney Day

Sometime yesterday afternoon the sky opened after nearly a week, and sunlight, washed clean and pure, began pouring through the clouds.

 

 

J-Rab had to work and so, besides writing yesterday’s post, I didn’t do anything until she came home at lunchtime.

It was bliss. Cold and rainy outside, me hammering words out, warm in my Writer’s Uniform (dressing gown) and getting some good shit, stuff I’m proud of, out in words.

If you can get the right words out in the right order, you can create magic.

Later I tidied the flat tirelessly and got the place looking like humans live here and J-Rab and I walked across the road for pizza. We walked through the early dusk, past the roads ruined by rain and the red incandescent glow of the sex shop that’s painted mauve inside and lit entirely in bleached white light.

The pizza turned out to be excellent, despite the fact that the inside of the restaurant  looked like a kind of faux Olde English Pub / Dungeon.

 

 

We decided to watch Paranormal Activity and got about halfway through it before J-Rab asked me in a ‘this is not funny anymore’ voice to please switch it off and I agreed almost instantly.

It’s a freaky, freaky ass movie. Think Blair Witch Project only in a house instead of in the woods and cut the cast down to a total of four people, two of whom only have cameo roles in the movie.

It’s the kind of movie where you know the evil that threatens them is closing in constantly and there’s no way they can avoid it.

So we watched porn instead, much safer alternative.

 

 

Good times 😉

-ST

If you wanna run cool…

Overhead, the sky hangs thick and black with clouds and lashes the earth intermittently with rain.

Add the fact that for the last four days it’s been severely cold and you don’t exactly have the makings of the best week. Right from the day this dreary weather started I wrote that all I wanted to do was hide under the blankets until it passed and well, today is FINALLY that day.

 

 

And so I’m lying here right now in an old school rowing T-shirt from 2000, listening to Dire Straits while memories from last night bob to the surface of my mind.

I made a break from work at 4 with Nix and she dropped me back at my place because J-Rab had the car. I splashed through the deepening puddles, free for the next 48 hours and somehow the sky that had looked so miserable before changed, and took on a kind of silvery tone, became radiant, and made the afternoon ghostly and the evening full of promise.

Guitar Jon came around after work yesterday and we drank coffee and listened to the new Them Crooked Vultures albums which, as a musician, amateur producer and sound guru, Guitar Jon really liked.

We shot the breeze awhile until The Glaze rocked up in his customary sensible jersey and proceeded to join us for more coffee.

 

 

We rolled two games of Backgammon and I thrashed him like a pro in the first one, but got pipped at the post in the second, losing by two pieces.

I used to do this thing back at varsity where Graum and I would roll a few games of Backgammon before we went out on the town, to test our luck. The games were always fierce and quick and when either of us won, it was by the skin of our teeth.

And while we played, I’d think of the Radiohead song ‘Lucky” (off OK Computer) and the lyrics would echo in my head,

I’m on a roll
I’m on a roll
This time.
But I feel my luck could change.

Over the last two years that I studied in that batshit town, that song became more than a song for me, it became some kind of ancient incantation, something that has always existed through time in some form or another.

A luck song. ‘I feel my luck could change’ – it could get better, it could get worse and the singing of that song would bring about one or the other.

And so I would often belt out the chorous of that song, letting it ring in the empty spaces of the house we lived in, which was the biggest house I’ve ever lived in, our digs in our last year at Grahamstown.

We called it the Zombie Mansion. I was solid, about 150 years old, perfectly square, two huge storues, high ceilings, wooden floors, sort of Cape Dutch looking, but different.

We loved that digs. We partied so hard when we lived in that house, all of us, that we often came out the other side, squinting at the approaching dawn, drunk and happy.

So my two games last night told me 50/50. My luck wasn’t bad, but it sure wasn’t good either. It’s important to know.

 

 

The Glaze had to be somewhere else and left not long after our second game. Guitar and I moved onto cup no. 3 and talked about how he needs to get off his ass and record. For as long as he’s not doing that he’s not living, he’s just killing time and he knows it.

Jenni-fuh also came home and started showering and getting ready for her office year-end party, which was a… wait for it… Mexican theme! They did up a  marquee outside their offices, which Jenni-fuh was a little sceptical about, it sounded a little cheap, but apparently they did it up really, really well and were going to have pinyatas (spelling fail) and Petrone tequila, the whole deal.

J-Rab joined the party soon after, whirling through the door, cold from outside, but happy, with this beautiful smile on her face that lights up the world.

Our POA was to meet up with some friends of J-Rab’s she hasn’t seen in awhile and party somewhere. I called in some backup in the form of the best damn Greek connection I ever made, one of my oldest friends, Stikey, who came out with us, gun’s blazin’.

We met up at Molly Malone’s and I recognised J-Rab’s friends instantly which, in the case of the one, Soph, I wasn’t surprised, but the other, Lu, had a face I recognised, but didn’t. I asked J-Rab if Lu went to Rhodes, but she said no.

Turns out she did though and I instantly remembered where I knew her from. My memories are etched pretty clearly as a general rule, J-Rab is surprised all the time by how I remember things and M-Class, Graum’s girlfriend is too.

Introductions out of the way, we commenced the serious business of partying, celebrating being young and alive and laughing, always laughing.

Conversation was free and easy and it wasn’t long before we were having a killer time. At some stage a camera was produced, with sexy results.

 

 

About half-way through the night, Lu points out this guy and says, ‘Shit, don’t you know that guy, he went to Rhodes, Oliver Becker.’

I stared at Oliver Becker and something sparked off waaaayy at the back of my head.

Yeeaahh… I recognised Oliver Becker.

‘Fuck, his surname’s not ‘Becker’’, I said, watching him from our table.

‘Yes it is!’ said Lu.

‘No, I know that guy. We went to primary school together, I swear his name’s not ‘Becker’. At that Lu approached Oliver X and after a few minutes called me over.

I greeted X and asked him his surname straight up. It wasn’t Becker. Then the following conversation ensued, here’s the truncated version:

‘So, Oliver, your ex is doing really well,’ Lu started, not hiding her intentions whatsoever.

‘I heard,’ X replied.

‘Yeah, she’s looking really gorgeous, stunning, amazing, and she’s SO happy with her new guy, you know they’re getting married soon? Yeah, he’s gorgeous too, Spanish guy, really great guy, she’s really, really happy with him, it’s so exciting, the wedding’s in a month, I can’t wait!’

‘That’s nice,’ X replied, ‘I’m happy for her.’

‘So dude, how’ve you been, what’ve you been up to?’ I asked, trying to save the awkwardness of the conversation thus far.

‘I own a construction company and part of an advertising agency. I just bought a house in Camps Bay and I’m engaged, marrying a pilot, she’s great, I’ve also got my pilot’s license, but not for commercial, I fly helicopters.’

‘Huh,’ I replied. ‘You could set up a great drug cartel with a helicopter, provided you had a safe place to land it.’

‘Hahaha. Exactly. Well, I’ll probably buy my own helicopter soon, I –’

‘Ok, I’m gonna stop you right there and go back and sit down at my table. Good to see you.’

Wanker.

 

 

Turns out he used to rough up his ex, that’s why Lu was so openly hostile in a friendly way, which I guess was exactly how I was after finding out how loaded the guy is.

Money, to me, is something I spend to satiate my basic needs for shelter, food, transport and entertainment, beyond that I don’t place any belief in the idea that having a lot of it leads to happiness or superiority over other people.

Money proves nothing to me except that you have money. If you want to earn my respect show me honesty, integrity, humour, intelligence, don’t show me money.

Some of the very best of people I have met in this life are poor, or live modestly, but not extravagantly and are able to save very little.

We drank and partied until Molly Malone’s cleared out to the dregs and bar flies and this little blonde girl who flitted from one guy to the next, we counted four in total.

Funniest thing was at the end of the night we spotted Numbers One and Two having what looked like a little tiff between them, but really, both were of such an unremarkable appearance and manor, and so used to behaving meek and mild, the argument just turned into a chat after a few minutes and both went their separate ways.

 

 

We made an abortive attempt after Molly’s to go to Billy The Bums (I know, who names these places?!) but stayed for exactly as long as it took to drink a glass of water and left.

J-Rab and I drove back home, slowly through the soft rain and collapsed into bed together, happy and tired and curled up tight to keep warm.

We drifted off to sleep in minutes, unconcerned about the hangover to follow because of the Milk Thistle Liver tablets we swallowed before we passed out.

Dire Straits said it best, ‘If you wanna run cool, you gotta run on heavy fuel.’

If you party hard, eat too, give your body sustenance to help you deal with the booze, eat before you go to sleep, drink shitloads of water, take liver enzymes.

Don’t fuck out. Or else who’s gonna read my blog if not you crazy fuckers?

Hold that thought.

-ST

The Hubbly Debate

Last night I was listening to 702 and they had this pretty interesting debate going on about Hubbly Bubblies (or Hookah pipes) because apparently a lot of teenage kids are smoking them and it’s destroying their lives.

 

 

It’s your typical Little Johnny story where Little Johnny starts out innocently smoking a Hubbly or two with his friends and then a year down the line in mainlining heroine and smoking cocks for cash.

I couldn’t really believe what I was hearing though, they brought in some expert or other who asked the question, What happens when the kids get bored of smoking molasses through water?

The answer, he said, is they replace the water with Vodka. I was totally outraged – what a waste of Vodka! Fucking drink the Vodka you retards!

Then what happens when they get bored of the molasses? Well, then they smoke dagga, through Vodka (siff!). And when they get bored of the dagga? Then they mix mandrax in there, and eventually heroine.

Aaahh, the youth of today. Pretty much identical to the youth of yesterday. I remember back in highschool we tried all kinds of really dangerous and fucked up shit, everything from getting good and wasted on butane to smoking matches (I know, what the fuck?) to drinking metholated spirits strained through bread.

I swear, I would have been a fucking rocket scientist if it weren’t for the massive amounts of damage I did to my brain when I was a kid.

 

 

Worst was this one buddy of mine, we’ll call him Duck. Duck came to school one Monday looking like a pile of horse shit and when I asked him how his weekend was, he said Awesome!

‘Dude, you have to try this thing we found out, fucking AMAZING!’

‘What thing?’

‘You have to smoke Myprodol in a cigarette, ffffaaaaahhhhhhkkkkkk!’

‘Mypro-who?’

‘Myprodol dude! Fucking AMAZING!’

‘Yeah, you said… amazing how?’

‘Dude, like, colours and fucking weird sounds and everything!’

‘Um, ok. I think my mom has some, thanks for the good advice.’

Worst. Idea. Ever. It tasted like crap, it tasted worse than crap, it tasted chemical and really, really evil. I snuck out the kitchen door and smoked it in the back yard while my parents were sleeping and all I remember was feeling like my heart was going to burst through my chest and having to hold on to the grass because the world was spinning so fast I was convinced I was gonna fly off it.

Back at school the next day, Mosquito, this little irritating kid asked me why I looked like crap. I grinned.

‘Dude, you have to try this thing we found out…’

 

 

As for Hubblies though, I would definitely recommend that kids, and people in general, stay the hell away from them. In varsity we had one for a year or two, but near the end, started noticing that smoking it was becoming as pleasant as sucking a car exhaust pipe.

We tried a lot of different things to clean the Hubbly out, one of which was to detach the hose part and blow into it to see what would come out and no shit, this HUGE cloud of fine black and silvery dust exploded out the end.

‘What the hell is that?’ my digsmate Graumpot asked.

‘No idea dude,’ I replied.

‘Blow again.’

I blew again. A second black and silvery cloud came out.

‘Fuck, have we been breathing this stuff into our lungs?’ Graum asked.

‘I think so…’

‘Huh. I guess that explains why we’ve had pneumonia for the last three months.’

‘I guess it does.’

‘Let’s never smoke Hubbly again.’

‘Let’s do that.’

Out of sheer curiosity we cut the hose open after that and found a crusty, rusted and foul smelling spring coiled inside there.

A spring! That’s what they put inside Hubbly hoses. People, you have been warned.

In other news, I heard a rumour it’s FRIDAY FUCK YEAH! I got one plan and one plan ONLY this weekend and that’s stay the fuck in bed, and I’d urge anyone reading this to do the same.

Until then, stay warm, don’t let the kak weather get you down cause as soon as it breaks and the sun beats down again, strong and hot, we’re all going streaking in the streets 🙂

 

 

-ST