EDDIES IN THE SEXUAL SUBSTREAM
Walking to the Uno dealership was no easy feat. It took me about four hours both ways, stopping at a car wash so Spud could lap from a tap; looking for those snobby little Jaguar and Fiat emblems in the hot blue sky. While I was there I snuck into the showroom, sweating, and asked one of the salesmen slowly twirling a pen behind his desk about selling the Uno.
He paused in his twirling, his pen held up like a cigarette, and said, 'We've just sold a similar one for R9000.'
While I digested this he sat back and began twirling again. 'What is it you do?' he asked. When I said my last job had been in security his eyes glazed over and there was a sudden tang of low-rent desperation to my negotiating. I might start wheedling in a second, or trying to flog the frigging dog - which was dripping saliva all over the polished slate tiles. 'Anyway,' he said, picking his phone up, 'the directors will only be in on Monday. They're the ones with the power to buy, so ... '
So back to the camp, buying a few Stouts on the way. I hadn't drunk since my session with Brian, two nights ago. The sun was beating down from directly overhead now; but the houses on this downhill stretch to the sea had a sleepy langour to them, set in dense rolling coastal thicket, stagnating beneath a warm muggy blue sky. It felt very different to yesterday's angst ridden PE sky, with its little scraps of cirrus flitting along in a glassy wind.
Back inside the cool fenced enclosure of the camp I spoke to a black khaki-clad groundsman who came around to check on us. He explained that Roger, the owner of the camp, came around every second day or so to collect the rent. I erected the tent and slipped inside with the zipppered entrance flaps on both sides tied back. Two happy days now to do nothing except stagnate in cool dappled shade with my book and supply of stouts - breathing in thick sea air, maybe stirring now and then to go for a piss. Laid back beach decrepitude. Then two heads, the girl and the boy I'd seen earlier, popped into the opening of the tent.
"Hullo Oom!' the boy squawked. He was blonde, with a fat face and a snub nose. 'Jussie! Does Oom like beer? Oom Dawie also likes beer, but it makes him crazy! That's why Pa doesn't like it when Oom Dawie drinks.'
The girl sneered sideways at him and then nodded vigorously at me, as if to say: he's an idiot but he's right. Before I could say anything there was a pinging noise followed by sharp chattering and a clashing of branches overhead. The two heads whipped away.
'Pa's shooting the monkeys!' the boy yelled. 'Kom kyk Oom! The leash was still attached to Spud, the other end looped around my foot. He charged out - monkeys! - dragging me half out the tent. Sure enough, there was Pa, grinning through rotten teeth, brother in law of Brakman, husband to the 300 pound (at least) woman in the tent, shooting monkeys in the trees overhead with a BB pistol, taking aim with a classic two handed grip. A security man, true's God, grade three.
And that was that. Over the next few days the only time I got away from this crowd was at night, when I was asleep; and even then I imagined I could hear hot breathing and scuffling around the tent, come to check up on the Oom.
There was Helga, about 9, and Willem, about 10, and Lettie, about 12. I got so used to them being around the tent that I stopped noticing them. They didn't irritate me, funnily enough. If I got annoyed I yelled at them and they dissapeared for half an hour and then reappeared as if nothing had happened, asking, 'Ag! Does Oom's fone have games? Can I mos speel wiff it?'
'No.'
'Ag! Does Oom want to come for a walk on the beach?'
'No.'
'Ag! ... Can I mos take Oom's hond vir n' walk then?'
'OK. But don't yank him ... moenie sy kop druk nie. Hy kry seer. OK?'
'Ag! Ya Oom!'
And for the next hour I'd see Helga, cute and stroppy, yanking Spud around; or Spud yanking her around, his head pointed up at the trees, fixated by monkeys. There would be shrieking as he tried to climb a tree, or pained squawking when Willem Jr - whose white gut trembled as he ran - tried to take the leash from Helga and got slapped around for his trouble.
Helga was going to be a hit with the boys when she got older. She was sassy and confident and comfortable in her budding curves. Willem Jr was stupid, with a voice that often sounded like a throttled budgie. The older girl, Lettie, stayed inside a lot with her mom and was more guarded and withdrawn. I think she was embaressed to be living in a tent and not going to school like other kids. I mentioned this to Pa and he said he would enroll the kids as soon as things were looking up. But in the meantime, no ya, vasbyt.
There was the oldest kid, Stefaan, about 17. He was the family's main breadwinner - a waiter at a chinese restuarant up the road. He would come over in the evenings after work and sit cross legged in my tent opening, wiffling on in a sighing, high pitched voice, while I sipped my Stout and read my book and nodded blearily at him. He was a big kid, but he had this soft feminine passivity about him that was rather doomed. It seemed he would end up being drawn towards a mean bitch or bastard one day, and vice-versa.
One night he was wiffling on in his wounded girls voice. I was only half listening when I heard, 'Piet asked would I go wiff him, and I said yes, so I went wiff Piet.' When I looked at him he looked down and twiddled a tuft of grass beside his grubby bare foot. Piet was a biker dude in a nearbye caravan who spent most of his time sipping beers with gritty calm beneath his awning; or heading off on his mean looking motorbike to sip beers with gritty calm at biker joints.
Go wiff? Stefaan had said it with a sort of tender, nostalgic wistfulness ... Ya, me and Piet did go wiff each other. Had Piet been belting Stefaan, his face grittily calm somewhere over Stefaan's bent back?
'Where did you go?' I asked. Jauling?'
Stefaan paused, twiddling the grass for a while before dreamily saying, 'Yaa, jauling. I went wiff Piet jauling, to a very nice club, and Piet did buy me some very nice beers ... '
Sweet Jesus. My sexual radar is useless. Was this kid obviously gay, and I was too thick to see it? Was this just a come-on? Piet went wiff me, so if you want to go wiff me ... ? People seem to be plugged into this roaring sexual substream but it eddies around me hopelessly. Now I was paranoid about this big, girlish seventeen year old, with grubby bare feet, sitting in the opening to my tent. I told him I was very tired and managed to get him to shamble off - a wounded receding falsetto: 'Yaaa ... my family is also tired ... I must go now and sommer talk to the hond ... ' leaving me thinking: go wiff?
There was Willem Snr, the Pa; and there was Dawie, the doomed brak Oom - brother of Wilma, the 300 pound Ma. I keep repeating this but when I say 300 pounds I mean 300 pounds. She was enormous. Of course Willem Snr was lanky and slinky and horny looking - exactly the sort of man you'd expect to see beside one of these mammoth women. They all slept in a row on the tent floor, in a jumble of sleeping bags and blankets and pillows. Except Ma and Pa, who got to sleep inside the caravan; or maybe just Ma, there might not have been enough room left over for Pa in there.
The family had uprooted and driven down from Lydenburg about three weeks ago. During an early stage of the trip I drove through Lydenburg, baking on an arid plateau as I descended the Eastern Transval Berg, and it had been a doomed place. Doom had followed them down. It clung to them. Stefaan was going to be humped to death by an entire gang of gritty bikers. Oom Dawie was going to get roaring crazy dronk verdriet and be beaten to death by a whole shebeen of plank swinging kaffers. My Lydenburg memories were of a young white car guard turning to smile coquettishly as she crossed the road in front of the Uno. Her front teeth had been missing. A minute later these lean, sunbaked teenagers had given me rotten looks from the back of a lacquered purple V6 bakkie while I drove behind them - one wearing a silky black shirt with orange flames licking upwards, and wrap around sunglasses, with sideburns struggling down to somewhere near his jaw line; all of them giving me looks that left me in no doubt: look at us fokken skeef and we will fokken pull you out of your sissy car and fokken keel you right here in the fokken street! Lydenburg style! Even the name of the place told you to get the fok out. Lydenburg: Place Of Suffering.
But getting back to that first Saturday night. I padded to the shower and back in the tranquil gloaming, the grass cool beneath my feet. In the shower stall, in the grey light filtering through the dusty, cracked windows, black mould coated the silicone between the white wall tiles. It also coated the dark concrete shower floor in a slippery green film, causing me to slip once or twice.
After dark there was just enough light coming from the various caravans to faintly illuminate the thicket walls and the overhead canopy, giving the camp the feel of a grotto, a secure dark green cave. I ate outside the tent with Spud beside me, the gasoline lamp on the grass next to us projecting flickering shadows onto the thicket. My maroon tent glowed like a pink lung with the torch hanging inside it.
While I was eating Helga and Willem and Lettie came across and sat with me. They took furtive sips of my Stout and inspected my tin.
'Ag sis!' Helga said. 'Does Oom eat boontjies?' Then she inspected Spud's tin. 'Ya, dis beter. Hoender is lekker vir die hond.'
They exchanged looks and Lettie said, 'Ma says she won't mind if you want to come and watch Noot vir Noot.' When I said I was too tired they looked shocked. Who in their right minds gave up the chance to watch Noot Vir Noot when there was nothing else to do? I was stuffed though. My kind of basic camping had made me dirnal: opening gates and sneaking Stout numbed into the bush in the evenings; driving off anxiously in the early morning before an enraged farmer could find me.
I sent them back to their tent looking rather crestfallen, their precious offering rejected, and crawled into the pink lung with my own creature comforts: my tinny transistor radio, my dog curled in the crook of my arm, my book balanced in my hand a few inches above my nose.
Noises drifted across from the familie tent: plates being scraped, a dustbin lid clanking; murmuring voices. There were tv noises: blurts of applause, and that manic presenter from Noot vir Noot with the groovy waistcoats.
I turned the torch off and lay there, listening to the sea murmuring, to the distinct tiny crumps of the waves breaking, sliding into sleep, turning on my hip one final time and wrapping an arm around Spud as he fluttered a tolerant dog sigh ... drifting off ... Then very clearly, floating across from their tent and zapping the darkness of my tent into sharper focus, I heard Dawies hungry glottal voice say, 'Ya, die Engelsman het beer.' Fok. He was pining after my supply of Stouts. It must be torture for him, watching me slurp them all day.
An hour went by and I was slowly drifting off again. There were clicks and a faint, sussurating hum coming from the forest all around: the combined noise of millions of insects crawling about. The grotto was so quiet I could hear minute rustlings in the grass near my head: a beetle looking for my earhole to climb into and drive me insane with pain. A minor squabble was taking place in the tent. They were all jostling in a row on the tent floor. There were aggrieved squawks from Willem, and then loud squalling. Helga must have slapped him. A burst of wronged adenoidal flutings came from Stefaan. Maybe Dawie rolled over and caught him on the head with an elbow. Pa's weak voice made half hearted attempts at discipline. This bickering droned on like a distant tv. It was almost comforting ... I was sliding into sleep again, making one final turn onto my hip, wrapping an arm around my sighing dog.
Then came a noise like a like a bull elephant squealing. 'Ek gaan jou fokken FOKKEN MOER!'
Ma had flipped! Six meaty stinging slaps rang out in the stunned silence, accompanied by frightened whimpering, and then muffled sobs and strained, swallowed groans from Helga and Willem. They were trying to keep quiet. Ma was like a tanker with a head of steam going. Best to stay silent until she had gone rumbling over you. Spuds head was quiveringly upright in the darkness, his ears erect. What the fuck was out there? Carnivours! Beserk herbivoures!
After this the camp was even more silent than before. Just the thicket humming, and the faint, sibilant murmuring of the sea, like static electricity, interupted by the tiny crumping of the waves ... actually not so tiny. I was wide awake now and could hear them clearly. I remembered how earlier Helga and Willem had irritated me, acting like brats to get my attention while I chatted to Pa. Pa had grinned and done nothing. His lack of discipline had annoyed me and I'd been dying to crap on them. Now all I could think about was Ma's insane sqealing, and those vicious, stinging slaps forcing out the breathless whimpering that I'd heard. The sound leached the romance out of the camp for me. I lay in the dark and looked at myself and my situation with cold, dreary anxiety.
He paused in his twirling, his pen held up like a cigarette, and said, 'We've just sold a similar one for R9000.'
While I digested this he sat back and began twirling again. 'What is it you do?' he asked. When I said my last job had been in security his eyes glazed over and there was a sudden tang of low-rent desperation to my negotiating. I might start wheedling in a second, or trying to flog the frigging dog - which was dripping saliva all over the polished slate tiles. 'Anyway,' he said, picking his phone up, 'the directors will only be in on Monday. They're the ones with the power to buy, so ... '
So back to the camp, buying a few Stouts on the way. I hadn't drunk since my session with Brian, two nights ago. The sun was beating down from directly overhead now; but the houses on this downhill stretch to the sea had a sleepy langour to them, set in dense rolling coastal thicket, stagnating beneath a warm muggy blue sky. It felt very different to yesterday's angst ridden PE sky, with its little scraps of cirrus flitting along in a glassy wind.
Back inside the cool fenced enclosure of the camp I spoke to a black khaki-clad groundsman who came around to check on us. He explained that Roger, the owner of the camp, came around every second day or so to collect the rent. I erected the tent and slipped inside with the zipppered entrance flaps on both sides tied back. Two happy days now to do nothing except stagnate in cool dappled shade with my book and supply of stouts - breathing in thick sea air, maybe stirring now and then to go for a piss. Laid back beach decrepitude. Then two heads, the girl and the boy I'd seen earlier, popped into the opening of the tent.
"Hullo Oom!' the boy squawked. He was blonde, with a fat face and a snub nose. 'Jussie! Does Oom like beer? Oom Dawie also likes beer, but it makes him crazy! That's why Pa doesn't like it when Oom Dawie drinks.'
The girl sneered sideways at him and then nodded vigorously at me, as if to say: he's an idiot but he's right. Before I could say anything there was a pinging noise followed by sharp chattering and a clashing of branches overhead. The two heads whipped away.
'Pa's shooting the monkeys!' the boy yelled. 'Kom kyk Oom! The leash was still attached to Spud, the other end looped around my foot. He charged out - monkeys! - dragging me half out the tent. Sure enough, there was Pa, grinning through rotten teeth, brother in law of Brakman, husband to the 300 pound (at least) woman in the tent, shooting monkeys in the trees overhead with a BB pistol, taking aim with a classic two handed grip. A security man, true's God, grade three.
And that was that. Over the next few days the only time I got away from this crowd was at night, when I was asleep; and even then I imagined I could hear hot breathing and scuffling around the tent, come to check up on the Oom.
There was Helga, about 9, and Willem, about 10, and Lettie, about 12. I got so used to them being around the tent that I stopped noticing them. They didn't irritate me, funnily enough. If I got annoyed I yelled at them and they dissapeared for half an hour and then reappeared as if nothing had happened, asking, 'Ag! Does Oom's fone have games? Can I mos speel wiff it?'
'No.'
'Ag! Does Oom want to come for a walk on the beach?'
'No.'
'Ag! ... Can I mos take Oom's hond vir n' walk then?'
'OK. But don't yank him ... moenie sy kop druk nie. Hy kry seer. OK?'
'Ag! Ya Oom!'
And for the next hour I'd see Helga, cute and stroppy, yanking Spud around; or Spud yanking her around, his head pointed up at the trees, fixated by monkeys. There would be shrieking as he tried to climb a tree, or pained squawking when Willem Jr - whose white gut trembled as he ran - tried to take the leash from Helga and got slapped around for his trouble.
Helga was going to be a hit with the boys when she got older. She was sassy and confident and comfortable in her budding curves. Willem Jr was stupid, with a voice that often sounded like a throttled budgie. The older girl, Lettie, stayed inside a lot with her mom and was more guarded and withdrawn. I think she was embaressed to be living in a tent and not going to school like other kids. I mentioned this to Pa and he said he would enroll the kids as soon as things were looking up. But in the meantime, no ya, vasbyt.
There was the oldest kid, Stefaan, about 17. He was the family's main breadwinner - a waiter at a chinese restuarant up the road. He would come over in the evenings after work and sit cross legged in my tent opening, wiffling on in a sighing, high pitched voice, while I sipped my Stout and read my book and nodded blearily at him. He was a big kid, but he had this soft feminine passivity about him that was rather doomed. It seemed he would end up being drawn towards a mean bitch or bastard one day, and vice-versa.
One night he was wiffling on in his wounded girls voice. I was only half listening when I heard, 'Piet asked would I go wiff him, and I said yes, so I went wiff Piet.' When I looked at him he looked down and twiddled a tuft of grass beside his grubby bare foot. Piet was a biker dude in a nearbye caravan who spent most of his time sipping beers with gritty calm beneath his awning; or heading off on his mean looking motorbike to sip beers with gritty calm at biker joints.
Go wiff? Stefaan had said it with a sort of tender, nostalgic wistfulness ... Ya, me and Piet did go wiff each other. Had Piet been belting Stefaan, his face grittily calm somewhere over Stefaan's bent back?
'Where did you go?' I asked. Jauling?'
Stefaan paused, twiddling the grass for a while before dreamily saying, 'Yaa, jauling. I went wiff Piet jauling, to a very nice club, and Piet did buy me some very nice beers ... '
Sweet Jesus. My sexual radar is useless. Was this kid obviously gay, and I was too thick to see it? Was this just a come-on? Piet went wiff me, so if you want to go wiff me ... ? People seem to be plugged into this roaring sexual substream but it eddies around me hopelessly. Now I was paranoid about this big, girlish seventeen year old, with grubby bare feet, sitting in the opening to my tent. I told him I was very tired and managed to get him to shamble off - a wounded receding falsetto: 'Yaaa ... my family is also tired ... I must go now and sommer talk to the hond ... ' leaving me thinking: go wiff?
There was Willem Snr, the Pa; and there was Dawie, the doomed brak Oom - brother of Wilma, the 300 pound Ma. I keep repeating this but when I say 300 pounds I mean 300 pounds. She was enormous. Of course Willem Snr was lanky and slinky and horny looking - exactly the sort of man you'd expect to see beside one of these mammoth women. They all slept in a row on the tent floor, in a jumble of sleeping bags and blankets and pillows. Except Ma and Pa, who got to sleep inside the caravan; or maybe just Ma, there might not have been enough room left over for Pa in there.
The family had uprooted and driven down from Lydenburg about three weeks ago. During an early stage of the trip I drove through Lydenburg, baking on an arid plateau as I descended the Eastern Transval Berg, and it had been a doomed place. Doom had followed them down. It clung to them. Stefaan was going to be humped to death by an entire gang of gritty bikers. Oom Dawie was going to get roaring crazy dronk verdriet and be beaten to death by a whole shebeen of plank swinging kaffers. My Lydenburg memories were of a young white car guard turning to smile coquettishly as she crossed the road in front of the Uno. Her front teeth had been missing. A minute later these lean, sunbaked teenagers had given me rotten looks from the back of a lacquered purple V6 bakkie while I drove behind them - one wearing a silky black shirt with orange flames licking upwards, and wrap around sunglasses, with sideburns struggling down to somewhere near his jaw line; all of them giving me looks that left me in no doubt: look at us fokken skeef and we will fokken pull you out of your sissy car and fokken keel you right here in the fokken street! Lydenburg style! Even the name of the place told you to get the fok out. Lydenburg: Place Of Suffering.
But getting back to that first Saturday night. I padded to the shower and back in the tranquil gloaming, the grass cool beneath my feet. In the shower stall, in the grey light filtering through the dusty, cracked windows, black mould coated the silicone between the white wall tiles. It also coated the dark concrete shower floor in a slippery green film, causing me to slip once or twice.
After dark there was just enough light coming from the various caravans to faintly illuminate the thicket walls and the overhead canopy, giving the camp the feel of a grotto, a secure dark green cave. I ate outside the tent with Spud beside me, the gasoline lamp on the grass next to us projecting flickering shadows onto the thicket. My maroon tent glowed like a pink lung with the torch hanging inside it.
While I was eating Helga and Willem and Lettie came across and sat with me. They took furtive sips of my Stout and inspected my tin.
'Ag sis!' Helga said. 'Does Oom eat boontjies?' Then she inspected Spud's tin. 'Ya, dis beter. Hoender is lekker vir die hond.'
They exchanged looks and Lettie said, 'Ma says she won't mind if you want to come and watch Noot vir Noot.' When I said I was too tired they looked shocked. Who in their right minds gave up the chance to watch Noot Vir Noot when there was nothing else to do? I was stuffed though. My kind of basic camping had made me dirnal: opening gates and sneaking Stout numbed into the bush in the evenings; driving off anxiously in the early morning before an enraged farmer could find me.
I sent them back to their tent looking rather crestfallen, their precious offering rejected, and crawled into the pink lung with my own creature comforts: my tinny transistor radio, my dog curled in the crook of my arm, my book balanced in my hand a few inches above my nose.
Noises drifted across from the familie tent: plates being scraped, a dustbin lid clanking; murmuring voices. There were tv noises: blurts of applause, and that manic presenter from Noot vir Noot with the groovy waistcoats.
I turned the torch off and lay there, listening to the sea murmuring, to the distinct tiny crumps of the waves breaking, sliding into sleep, turning on my hip one final time and wrapping an arm around Spud as he fluttered a tolerant dog sigh ... drifting off ... Then very clearly, floating across from their tent and zapping the darkness of my tent into sharper focus, I heard Dawies hungry glottal voice say, 'Ya, die Engelsman het beer.' Fok. He was pining after my supply of Stouts. It must be torture for him, watching me slurp them all day.
An hour went by and I was slowly drifting off again. There were clicks and a faint, sussurating hum coming from the forest all around: the combined noise of millions of insects crawling about. The grotto was so quiet I could hear minute rustlings in the grass near my head: a beetle looking for my earhole to climb into and drive me insane with pain. A minor squabble was taking place in the tent. They were all jostling in a row on the tent floor. There were aggrieved squawks from Willem, and then loud squalling. Helga must have slapped him. A burst of wronged adenoidal flutings came from Stefaan. Maybe Dawie rolled over and caught him on the head with an elbow. Pa's weak voice made half hearted attempts at discipline. This bickering droned on like a distant tv. It was almost comforting ... I was sliding into sleep again, making one final turn onto my hip, wrapping an arm around my sighing dog.
Then came a noise like a like a bull elephant squealing. 'Ek gaan jou fokken FOKKEN MOER!'
Ma had flipped! Six meaty stinging slaps rang out in the stunned silence, accompanied by frightened whimpering, and then muffled sobs and strained, swallowed groans from Helga and Willem. They were trying to keep quiet. Ma was like a tanker with a head of steam going. Best to stay silent until she had gone rumbling over you. Spuds head was quiveringly upright in the darkness, his ears erect. What the fuck was out there? Carnivours! Beserk herbivoures!
After this the camp was even more silent than before. Just the thicket humming, and the faint, sibilant murmuring of the sea, like static electricity, interupted by the tiny crumping of the waves ... actually not so tiny. I was wide awake now and could hear them clearly. I remembered how earlier Helga and Willem had irritated me, acting like brats to get my attention while I chatted to Pa. Pa had grinned and done nothing. His lack of discipline had annoyed me and I'd been dying to crap on them. Now all I could think about was Ma's insane sqealing, and those vicious, stinging slaps forcing out the breathless whimpering that I'd heard. The sound leached the romance out of the camp for me. I lay in the dark and looked at myself and my situation with cold, dreary anxiety.
posted by Krisstoffel at 4:24 AM
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