Fugitive motels
"The days we shaped were all frosty and bright"
Weather to fly
The girl on the bus stared at me open-mouthed.
"You mean you aren't going home for Christmas" She said aghast "You're going to stay in the hall alone?"
I nodded solemmnly.
"But what are you going to do?" My friend wailed.
"Oh there's nothing to worry about" I said "I cope very well with solitude"
She was quiet for a while then she brightened up and said "Well, I'll get you a Christmas present then" She said "I mean its not right that you wont even get a Christmas present is it?"
I had not considered the fact that not receiving a Christmas present would have counted as some sort of historical injustice towards my humble person.I was glad to discover that this was what it actually was.
****
So this girl went out one night and- aided by the uncaring hand of alcohol- slipped and banged her head on the toilet bowl. She sustained a concussion and was under doctor's orders to stay indoors and be watched all day incase something happened.
Instead the very next night, she was nearly forced to go out by a mob of people. Talk of concussions didnt do much good. It was the tyranny of hedonism- 'You HAVE to come out with us and we HAVE to have a good time.' Battered on all sides by increasingly hysterical people, she stood her ground. I felt secretly pleased for her. It was a victory for common sense and-in its own way- an epic one. Outside was a sky as black as regret and inside, Johnny Borell was singing plaintively to a disinterested audience.
I wandered in and out of people's stories even when I was sitting still. A drunk girl stumbled into the TV room late at night while I was watching something and proceeded to insist that the two of us go shopping for supehero outfits the next day (haloween was coming up). The fact that she didnt know who I was didnt stop her insisting she would give me a knock the next day (an event which evidently did not come to pass). Meanwhile as I stayed up to watch the US Elections, part of that historic night was somewhat marred by the couple who for some strange reason joined me in the TV room and then began to snuggle and make out on the couch a few meters away from me casting a double-headed shadow over proceedings. It was there a few weeks previously that I found myself engaging in a 'Ring of fire' session with a group of total strangers who interrupted my previously gallant efforts to watch the Football Highlights. Such a fiendishly complicated drinking game not suprisingly took us to that cozy, twilight zone of alcohol-fuelled friendship where we smiled warmly at each other and seized the moment so tightly, we nearly choked it. This culture-bridging exercise was brought to you by Vodka.
And my friend found himself in the somewhat ignonimous position of being yelled at 'Oy whitey! you're a dick!' by a total stranger somewhere near the top of the Owen Park Tower Hall (Seeing as I was the only black person in the group, being identified as 'whitey' by another white person while walking with a group of mainly white people must have made him feel he had been rugby tackled by the Cosmos) Bizzarely enough this happened twice- although the second time he was identified by his green sweather but the one constant theme of the verbal assault was that my friend was a dick. It was the same stranger lying in wait at odd hours of the night to torment another stranger from the safety of his tenth floor bedroom window. Sometimes life gives you your very own private heckler.
And what is to become of the mad Asian woman who stalks the bustop near Campus and shouts incomprehensibly at the bemused passengers in the 20 second window of opportunity she gets when the doors open? She is everywhere, walking with a sheaf of papers with most of the words on it typed in a tiny font size. Something about Freemasons and an evil conspiracy stretching all the way to the top of the Government and the Judiciary. Oh yes, and black kids being kidnapped and experimented on by White Freemasons in a massive conspiracy whose ultimate goal is never made clear but the basic suggestion is that there is a secret war in which a secret society of white people is trying to exterminate minorities in the country. Details, alas are lacking.
She came on the bus one night as we returned from a club and walked around handing out the papers while someone at the back shouted obscenities at her. It was 2am and there she was stiffly holding out a paper towards me with pitiless eyes as she went by.
It is fair to say that our lives have clearly gone in completely different directions.
Weather to fly
The girl on the bus stared at me open-mouthed.
"You mean you aren't going home for Christmas" She said aghast "You're going to stay in the hall alone?"
I nodded solemmnly.
"But what are you going to do?" My friend wailed.
"Oh there's nothing to worry about" I said "I cope very well with solitude"
She was quiet for a while then she brightened up and said "Well, I'll get you a Christmas present then" She said "I mean its not right that you wont even get a Christmas present is it?"
I had not considered the fact that not receiving a Christmas present would have counted as some sort of historical injustice towards my humble person.I was glad to discover that this was what it actually was.
****
So this girl went out one night and- aided by the uncaring hand of alcohol- slipped and banged her head on the toilet bowl. She sustained a concussion and was under doctor's orders to stay indoors and be watched all day incase something happened.
Instead the very next night, she was nearly forced to go out by a mob of people. Talk of concussions didnt do much good. It was the tyranny of hedonism- 'You HAVE to come out with us and we HAVE to have a good time.' Battered on all sides by increasingly hysterical people, she stood her ground. I felt secretly pleased for her. It was a victory for common sense and-in its own way- an epic one. Outside was a sky as black as regret and inside, Johnny Borell was singing plaintively to a disinterested audience.
I wandered in and out of people's stories even when I was sitting still. A drunk girl stumbled into the TV room late at night while I was watching something and proceeded to insist that the two of us go shopping for supehero outfits the next day (haloween was coming up). The fact that she didnt know who I was didnt stop her insisting she would give me a knock the next day (an event which evidently did not come to pass). Meanwhile as I stayed up to watch the US Elections, part of that historic night was somewhat marred by the couple who for some strange reason joined me in the TV room and then began to snuggle and make out on the couch a few meters away from me casting a double-headed shadow over proceedings. It was there a few weeks previously that I found myself engaging in a 'Ring of fire' session with a group of total strangers who interrupted my previously gallant efforts to watch the Football Highlights. Such a fiendishly complicated drinking game not suprisingly took us to that cozy, twilight zone of alcohol-fuelled friendship where we smiled warmly at each other and seized the moment so tightly, we nearly choked it. This culture-bridging exercise was brought to you by Vodka.
And my friend found himself in the somewhat ignonimous position of being yelled at 'Oy whitey! you're a dick!' by a total stranger somewhere near the top of the Owen Park Tower Hall (Seeing as I was the only black person in the group, being identified as 'whitey' by another white person while walking with a group of mainly white people must have made him feel he had been rugby tackled by the Cosmos) Bizzarely enough this happened twice- although the second time he was identified by his green sweather but the one constant theme of the verbal assault was that my friend was a dick. It was the same stranger lying in wait at odd hours of the night to torment another stranger from the safety of his tenth floor bedroom window. Sometimes life gives you your very own private heckler.
And what is to become of the mad Asian woman who stalks the bustop near Campus and shouts incomprehensibly at the bemused passengers in the 20 second window of opportunity she gets when the doors open? She is everywhere, walking with a sheaf of papers with most of the words on it typed in a tiny font size. Something about Freemasons and an evil conspiracy stretching all the way to the top of the Government and the Judiciary. Oh yes, and black kids being kidnapped and experimented on by White Freemasons in a massive conspiracy whose ultimate goal is never made clear but the basic suggestion is that there is a secret war in which a secret society of white people is trying to exterminate minorities in the country. Details, alas are lacking.
She came on the bus one night as we returned from a club and walked around handing out the papers while someone at the back shouted obscenities at her. It was 2am and there she was stiffly holding out a paper towards me with pitiless eyes as she went by.
It is fair to say that our lives have clearly gone in completely different directions.
posted by Minzo at 8:44 AM
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