Tricky Dickie

A very small man dancing man and his cat.

Today I opened the grocery cupboard and upon seeing a bottle of Tonic Water my immediate thought was, “I miss my Husband.”  

This concerns me because I think I may have replaced the love of a digitally challenged man with strange nights out at the Pot and Barrel.  I fear if he does not return to African shores soon I may die of a cirrhotic liver or via a hangover (this is a very real danger).  The real blame for all of this lies with the Pot & Barrel. If that pub was just a little more bland I might be able to stay home on a Saturday night.  But in the spirit of journalistic inquiry I keep going back there.  

Take for example a Saturday night two weekends ago, I sauntered along to the Pot with my sister and Simon the Farmer and within minutes of arriving, my sister had been given the glad eye by a grey-haired old toppie who showed his appreciation of her physical form by licking his lips in an alarmingly reptilian manner.  We were distracted from Lizard Lips questionable advances by the multi-racial dance-off that kicked off to Johnny Clegg’s Impi.  Cue-white boys high kicking themselves on the right road to a groin sprain, while black guys worked their best spaghetti legs and other low temperature moves. 

Moments later a bar fight broke out away from the dance floor in which the two halves of the bar swayed to and fro in a frenzy of punches, tackled restraints and a particularly drunk girl who kept falling out of the action and then diving back in.  My sister had gingerly pulled us away from the action, so we spectated the debauched punch up whilst sipping on a beer quart as the D.J continued to spin the beats and ‘Journey’ compelled us not to stop believing.  Eventually the D.J killed the music and head barman, the appropriately named ‘Justice,’ weighed in and stopped the barney.

Things had reduced themselves to a level of relative normality when I spied a chap I recognized from my primary school days casually dropping his trousers and exposing himself to the oblivious crowd.  I identified the pant-dropper as Richard and in the spirit of Americanism immediately nicknamed him Dick.  Poor Dickie was rather pog-eyed from way too much twala and unable to open one eye he looked a bit like this:

By this point every time I looked at Dick - the pant dropper, who was doing a strikingly good penis impersonation a la Bridesmaids - I was floored by acute hysteria.  Noting my merriment Dick came over whereupon we reflected on the old school days. I told him he had certainly grown since then and he told me that he loved me and then went on to describe my sister’s beauty to her.

Things came to a (ahem) head when Simon the Farmer wandered over to the bar and dear Dick bought him a spoek and diesel (rum and coke).  While waiting for his drink Dick felt up some poor grandmother at the bar and in an unfortunately ill-timed move, dropped his pants again.  The sexually assaulted woman in question was rightly disgusted and fled to get her ‘cop friend’.  

Unfortunately when Simon the Farmer recounted his story to me I thought he said she was off to get her ‘cock ring’.  I was really starting to think that the Pot was entering a whole new level of depravity, but I felt I shouldn’t judge the old cougar if she was so inclined.  Luckily I got the right end of the stick, just as an angry mob returned including the ‘cop friend’.  The offending Dick was manhandled towards the exit followed by the angered victim, whilst her gay friend skipped behind her clapping his hands indignantly at the entire spectacle.

Dear Simon the Farmer, was a bit put out by the incident as Dick had bought him a beverage and then realizing the error of his ways had hidden behind Simon’s 6 ft.+ frame bleating, “I don’t want to get hurt. I don't want to get hurt.”

Just when I didn’t think the night could get any weirder a very nice little man, some might call him a midget, named Herbert asked me to dance to Robin Thicke's Blurred Lines.

You wanna hug me,

What rhymes with hug me?

Today I am Mostly Dressed in Black.

Today I have the most tremendous rage.  I am off the charts cranky.

The poor bastards at the end of my rage-blast are the poorest of the poor, the unemployed and destitute scavenging through my rubbish bins.

Usually I handle rubbish day in a calm and resigned manner.  Today it is raising my blood pressured to dangerous levels.  The scene is the same throughout suburban South Africa, rubbish is put out for collection in black bin bags, it will be uplifted any time between 6.30am and 5pm, which leaves a large window for the poor who roam the streets on bin day to wade through your trash to find anything of use.

The entire thing upsets me.

It upsets me that men, women and children are reduced to this level of desperation in a country where Fat Cats ride the gravy train or cavalcade about in grotesquely expensive Audis and Mercedes Benz’s.

It upsets me to come home and find bin bags ripped open spewing their contents across the street and across the sidewalk. 

It upsets me that small children have waded through my used tampons, clumps of shower-drain hair and snotty tissues in an attempt to find food. 

It upsets me that I run out like a madwoman chastising some poor sod who is raking through my mess for a little hope:

Me: [Voice harsh with implosive barely controlled anger] Please don’t go through my rubbish, if there was food I put it aside in a bag. It is gone.

Man: [Looking up at me with bloodshot eyes] Hawu ma’am I just want some bread.

Me:  I’m sorry it is gone.  Someone was here earlier.  Please don’t go through my rubbish.

Man: Hawu. [Shakes his head at my heartlessness and moves on down the road.]

It upsets me that I will repeat this conversation five times in one morning. 

Even Zippi, our domestic worker is avoiding my rage.  I hear her trying to warn off would-be rubbish rustlers in Zulu.  No doubt she is saying, ‘the Madam is crazy, run for your lives.’

Today I am angry.  Today I feel a little too fragile for Africa.

Dear Kevin Costner - A Love Letter

                               1990's -Kevin Costner             2012- Kevin Costner

Dear Kevin Costner

I just thought you should know that you were my first love.  

I distinctly remember, age 7, watching you in Dances with Wolves and falling a little in love.  As I recall it was a family cinema outing, which were rather rare in those days.  We had just enjoyed a hearty family dinner at the Golden Egg Restaurant.  I had eaten a hamburger, which up to that moment had been the best thing in my life, but then I saw you Dancing (and stuff) with Wolves and that hamburger was quickly forgotten. You were very dashing.  At age 7 the defining points of the movie as I remember them, were: a soldier having his leg amputated with a hacksaw and your faithful wolf companion being shot/shot at (did it die?) by those mean, Yankee soldiers.    

You appeared in my life again a year later in 1991, as Robin Hood Prince of Thieves. I’m not going to sugarcoat it, I was a little bit jealous of Maid Marian.  There was a fair amount of slow dancing done at school dances to that theme tune, Bryan Adams’, ‘Everything I do, I do it for you,’ as I shuffled round a school hall in an oversized Mickey-Mouse T-shirt and white leggings, I was thinking only of you.

However the defining moment of my love for you had to be when you chose to be The Bodyguard to Whitney.  As a young South African growing up at the tail end of apartheid your multi-racial romance was eye opening to me.  I distinctly remember thinking, ‘Wow, a white man is kissing a black woman?’ I had no idea such radical love was possible.  

Only later on did I see you stylishly kicking immoral ass in The Untouchables.  By then you'd won me over with your politics – stealing from the rich to give to the poor, fighting crime, embracing new tribal cultures and kissing a beautiful black woman.  I was smitten.

Our 28-year age gap has meant that I’ve had to keep you as my secret old man crush.  It’s been easier since the ‘90s as you virtually disappeared.  I don’t want to talk about Waterworld.  I loved you in The Guardian, I know it was more age appropriate that I perv over Ashton Kutcher, but I only had eyes for you.  You played an aging, wreck of a man so well. 

And here you are again in 2013, just when I had put my love for you aside, you just pop up all wholesome and paternal as Superman’s Earthly father in Man Of Steel.  I gave your adopted son and his formidable 6-pack the Glad eye, but he still can’t quite compete.

Now through the magic of twitter I discover that you have a band, Kevin Costner Modern West, touring  America playing music inspired by the T.V series, 'The Hatfields & The McCoys' (I only watched half of it, a tad too much Romeo & Juliet styled family death for me).  I've always rather fancied the actor-slash-singer combo so once again your stock is on the rise.

After all these years my ardour has not cooled.  You are now my very much older man crush.  I’m holding you entirely accountable for the 10-year age gap in my marriage.   Strangely I’ve never googled you until 3 minutes ago to work out exactly how perverse and age-inappropriate my feelings for you are.  I have no idea if there is a Mrs. Costner, but if there is and she turns in her resignation…I’m sure my husband would understand, I mean after 23 years it must be love?

Yours in the spirit of guilty secrets,
xxx

Anything is Imminent

Every time I open my twitter feed I expect to find the news that Nelson Mandela has died.  We are an entire nation on death watch. 

Even the ever so proper Brits have joined this macabre pastime – the UK government has reportedly asked to hold a memorial service for Madiba at Westminster Abbey, which the Queen has requested to attend, should South Africa agree to the request.  While this is an epic event, as if granted this will be the first time an African and non-British citizen has been honoured in this way, I feel a tad uneasy about the fact that Nelson Mandela is still alive while we are planning his funeral.

Perhaps I’m being sentimental; the man is 94 and if rumours are correct he is on life support.  As his daughter was quoted as saying, “anything is imminent.” I couldn’t have put it more nonsensically myself.

I met Madiba once, as a brace-faced 13 year old on a charity fundraising cycling tour.  Somewhere in my parents house on a VHS tape I’m captured in teenage awkwardness, hunched over with spotty, embarrassment as I shake hands with one of the greatest legends of our time.  My tiny claim to fame means that I’ve always felt a sense of ownership over Madiba.

I started worrying about his ailing health more than a year ago, when I was living with an amazing 93 year old British dame, Myvanwy.  We were watching the news, subtitled for the hard of hearing, when the titles spelled out that “South African President Nelson Mandela has horses eyes.” “Dear Lord,” I thought, “what a terrible affliction to suffer at such an advanced age.”  In truth Madiba had been ‘hospitalised’ for a non-equine related complication, but the typo gave me a real turn.  I started preparing for the inevitable departure of the ‘Father of our Rainbow Nation.’

But if living with the elderly has taught me one thing it is that old people know they are going to die. All humans know death is inevitable but we choose to forget that we could be returned to ashes and dust at any fragile moment. The properly geriatric have dealt with this ugly truth over 80 odd years and face it with a rheumy eye. 

Myvanwy was particularly practical about death.  At 93 she knew that her days where numbered; she was reluctant to splash out on a new Spring wardrobe and found the 10 year guarantee on her new garden shed laughable.  She was never morose, simply practical and accepting that she was in the Dying Season of her life.  In fact in a poll of her bridge group everyone in the 80+ bracket was starting to feel a little worn out, to quote a 95 year old “ I feel grey and tired, like a piece of Blue Tack (Prestick) stretched too thin.”  Death as a topic did not depress them because at that age it had visited each and every one of them individually, taking spouses, parents and sometimes unfairly children.  They were a battle weary group, unafraid of death, but quite welcoming of a nice long kip, beyond the tedium of living into their 90’s.

I’m sure Mandela feels the same way.  I imagine he’s slipping in and out of consciousness listening to the bedside squabbling and is probably quite pleased to be hatching the Great Escape.

We as a nation are hanging on, hypnotized by the spectre of death, because once the Father of the Rainbow Nation is dead we, the children, will be forced to grow up.  We’re not worried about Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela, but we are rather concerned about ourselves.  As William Saunderson-Meyer notes in his Jaundiced Eye Column:

A giant is about to depart, leaving political pygmies to divide his cloak and squabble about who is rightful heir. The media will be wall to wall with plaudits, the world will groan with grief.

Saunderson-Meyer ends his column with an extract from William Henley’s Invictus, a poem that saw Mandela through the darker days of his imprisonment.  Saunderson-Meyer suggests it as a fitting epitaph for a great man.  I say it should be the battle cry of those of us left behind.  In his lifetime Mandela has been good and bad, for no heroes are ever only one thing, but above all he has been courageous and generous. 

I still check my twitter feed with trepidation.  The world needs heroes and we’re not ready to let this one go, but I remind myself that a frail, old man in a hospital bed needs his nation to be brave.

In the fell clutch of circumstance

I have not winced nor cried aloud.

Under the bludgeonings of chance

My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place or wrath and tears

Looms but the horror of the shade,

And yet the menace of the years

Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.