A Night Out

I was glad to get home finally, short of sleep and still dehydrated. I Had been away from home for nearly 24hrs

I had the idea to take a good evening nap, but not before I had a look at my gmail, where I found Eric online

4:59 PM me: wassup

get home ok?

5:00 PM eric: 4:30

Craig 8am

U?

5:01 PM All u guys left me at Obar

me: left u?

I closed the club

eric: is it?

me: was on the dance floor

basement

5:02 PM with Tint, Blints, Bob, Dunken and Adriana

eric: Adriana?

me: Sarah Jessica Paker

eric: OK

me: Adrien

I thin actually

eric: why

5:03 PM me: *think

just got home now

eric: where u end up

me: somewhere btw Hammersmith and Shepards Bush

eric: with the same item?

5:03 PM me: uh-huh

how I hate taking a crap in a chics bathroom the next morning

5:05 PM eric: u punished that item?

me: how is Craig?

got the couch

5:05 PM eric: u couldnt close the deal

me: got the couch

eric: useless

me: did not close

eric: so close yet so far

me: tell me about it

5:07 PM eric: yr nob must have been throbbing

me: was so tired

me: got to her place at 4:30

me: slept when it was getting light

5:09 PM craig?

eric: his aight

barbie

5:11 PM me: want to pass by later

but I must doss first

5:12 PM eric: cool

if pass shop please buy lemon

5:13 PM me: ok

eric: my throat is raw

5:14 PM me: that so called martini

5:15 PM eric: low immune system

protein in system only

5:17 PM me: whatever

u drank rubbish

5:18 PM eric: and smoking

That night started out, as it usually does with the three of us, the boys, Craig, Eric and I. At the bus stop waiting for that rare thing, the C10 bus. Spirits high and our tongues loose and jocular on a Saturday evening. Off the bus, in the tube and then out onto the central London night.

On the journey, we had caught up with each others weeks. About Craig’s adventures consulting for the National Grid and Eric’s leisurely days going to gym twice a day over his holidays. About my dull days answering phones and just wishing for the hot waitresses in the restaurant.

We were lost, again. Somehow, every weekend it happens this way. Craig and Eric leading me through circular routes somewhere between LiecesterSquare, Piccadilly Circus and Covent Garden. Always in search of some club or other that they were once at, at some drunken night. Short cuts, false landmarks, memory relapses and directions sought from strangers on the street who turn out to be South Africans half the time. My bladder bursting from my early evening beer. Finally we found it, the O-Bar, on a street corner. After 45 mins of walking the same 8 city blocks, and Craig chirps “I thought it was here” with a mischievouswry smile. I could have smacked him.

The occasion, though we never need one to be out on a Saturyday night, was Maryola’s birthday. She is the Polish girlfriend of Craig’s old friend Marlon, from Joberg. The whole cirlce of friends that centre on the couple of Maryola and Marlon are to convene this evening at the O-bar.

The O-Bar is a pub on the ground level, a dance floor in the basement and a lounge up stairs. The music was loud on all three levels. Maryola’s do was in the lounge.

Craig and Eric met lots of familiar faces, I met them all for the first time. The bar lady was unbelievably slow with the drinks, but a very hot trim slim thing originally from the Caribbean. I pointed out to Eric how her waist twisted as she shook the mixed drinks.

The crowd was sprawled over numerous large couches. These huge leather sofas crowded the room, grid locked with the coffee tables. People tripped and fumbled. The boys rattled away at the girls they had met before. I, having met no one, but Marlon and Maryola, was marooned on one couch with Bob. A 6 foot 2 Australian with a long rectangular face and short black cropped hair. A giant of a man with a voice to match. He seemed equally lost or pathetic to me in this party. Sat quiet and watching (because you could not hear much) other peoples conversations.

Bob introduced me to Duncan, his flat mate. Between the three of us the beers flowed in rounds, and thus conversation picked up and spread around better. I met William, an Ivorian I quickly got along with. We both confessed to each other our urge to dance (alcohol well into the blood). We went down stairs to check out the basement, where it was crowded, the vibe good and music bumping. We decided to get the rest of the party into the basement and proceeded back up the steps to collect them.

Only at the steps was a newly installed door bouncer (usually a dark muscly man with a mean countanance) who would not let us back up into the lounge. He would not believe we were of the lounge party and kept us back. Our protests made little impression on him and I was pretty upset by this. Eventually we got back up after a change of gaurds and I was decided on going home instead. I made for my jacket, concealed under a huge pile of other jackets on a leather couch.

Duncan was having a good time and did want the party to fizzle out early. Upon seeing me pick up my jacket, he and a couple others, Tina and Blint (two South African coloreds getting back together) asked me to stay. I was fixed on catching the last underground train home. But then Duncan mentioned that his best friend, Adrienne, was interested in meeting me. This persuaded me very quickly.

Adrienne was at the bar, suffering a pursuit from Eric. I could see that it would be yet another night out, having to compete with Eric for a girl. Adrienne came across to me as a girl with an arts background, with her high brown leather boots, thick woolly grey scarf and her bulky brown beaded necklaces. A not unattractive girl, a little short with off blond hair.

Duncan introduced us and we were soon well chatting. I have no idea what we were chatting about, but my tongue had taken a life of its own and my charm and wit had started to impress even me. Adrienne seemed suitably receptive to my conversational performance. She said she worked for the BBC and then I was very excited. Delirious almost. Eric and Craig however kept interrupting. Eric with his charms by comparing her favorably to Sarah Jessica Parker of Sex and the City (there is some resemblance to speak of) and Craig, well into his ubiquitous. Saturday night drunken stupor, dragging her off for a little dance. I was beside myself, when Adrienne whispered to me that I had nothing to worry about.

In the end we did go down to the basement to dance, well some of us anyway. Eric never found the basement, Craig got thrown out the basement for being drunk and disorderly while Marlon and Maryola just never showed up. Bob, Duncan, the colored couple (from South Africa) Adrienne and I did work up a good sweat dancing on the crowded floor. Well, Bob just sort of stood the with half and grin and Duncan for the most part just bobbed up and down. We danced, and I mostly up to and against Adrienne, until the lights came on to get us out the club.

There was an idea for us to all go to Duncan and Bobs place for the night and share a cab fare, which pleased me as it meant the rest of the night with Adrenne, with whom I knew there was something. In the end Adrienne declined going all the way to east London (where Duncan and Bob live) and preffered to go home (West London). Between two boys and one girl, I chose to tag along with Adrienne instead. However, just before we boarded a bus to her place she said to me ‘we are not going to do anything.’ But we were going to her place never the less.

Adrienne lives half way between Sheperds Bush and Hammersmith. Off the buys, we walked the empty streets, dodgin discarded cardboard and other debry, I joked about how rough her neighbourhood must be with its KFC on the high street indicating the presence of a lot of black people. She laughed. It was cold (2′c) and Adrienne held me left arm. I liked that.

In her two bedroom flat, we talked endlessly about god knows what. We drank tea. I admired and was envious of her books and CD collection (lots of world music). Just when it seemed the talking would never end I leant over and planted a gentle and soft kiss on her lips, a little to the side. With me bending a little too far forward, we just stood there for many minutes, my lips on hers, my hands in my pocket. Later we upgraded to the couch, where there was more kissing than talking. I soon got a sleeping bag (as it seemed’nothing’ was going to happen still) and I was glad to get some sleep finally, it being like 6am in the morning and still very drunk. Adrienne did join me, on the couch, in her pajamas (stripped) and there were innocent cuddles and more kisses. She did go back to her own bed finally though.

I had that strange sense of hyper awareness you get when you wake up in a strange place. It was light with that milky blue light that makes for English winter morning light. I had woken up with a colon discomfort which prompted a big delivery in the toilet of the only bathroom. Not a good move but I had no choice that morning. There was no air freshener so I opened the window, fanned the room with the door and prayed to god that Adriene did not wake for the bathroom anytime soon.

The sun beamed bright orange rays of light into her kitchen, revealing it to be messier than I had originally found it. I made two cups of tea and delivered them to Adirenne’s bedroom. I woke her up as I had to leave to meet a friend at Trafalgar square at noon. Her room too was brightly lit with the suns rays. Around her room was a projection of her personality and ambitions. Her abstract paintings on the wall, another one incomplete on an easel. DVD’s including the first Star Wars trilogy. More books and magazines and the usual mess of a room that confirms the suspicion that some spends more time out than in.

There was not much conversation before I left. My phone was flat so I could not take down her number. However, I had given her my number the night before.

“Call me I said” before I gave her another side lip kiss and made went down the stairs. She followed me to the door and kissed me goodbye again. Outside it was cold, grey, bright and half way between Hammersmith and Shepards bush.

Yvonne

“Lets walk to the Off-license and buy popcorn” I suggested to Yvonne. The Off-license is what London people call the corner shop that sells liquor. A sort of 7-11, though it has a full liquor license.

“No man, it’s far” Yvonne protested, but with a smile that showed she was tempted. “And it’s cold outside” pronouncing ‘outide’ as ‘outsaad‘ with her Stellenbosch Afrikaaner accent. She would be angry with me for casting her in a racial light by only the second paragraph. “Why does everything come down to race with you?” she has questioned me, more than once.

Yvonne loves popcorn. The evening I met her first, on my first day in the house we share with 6 others, she was lying accross the couch munching away at a huge bowl of popcorn while watching a whole season of Lost (season two) on the DVD player. Bowl after bowl popped away in the micowave. DVD after DVD popped into and out of the DVD player. But, I love tea. For every one of her trips to the micrwave, I made three to the kettle.

To my surprise, we were getting along quite well. It was my first evening in the house and I was eager to get to know its inhabitants. It was also refreshing to talk to a girl for a change and I was genuinely becoming engrossed into the stories of intrigue and survival on the adventure series Lost. However, I find popcorn unrewarding for all its required munching and chewing and its crumbs get stuck deep in the crevices of my gum.

I had only to mention Cape Town once, and I had set her off talking about the Cape.

“I love Stellenbosch” she said “I was born theh and I went to university theh, I just lovet. The mountains, the trees, the beach is just 15 min draav away, I lovet.” she beamed with bright smile, creasing her small pimply face.

I played along. I encouraged her. I agreed and claimed to miss Stellenbosch as well, though with more of an emphasis on the Cape as a whole. And it is true, I do miss the Cape. I do miss the pretty valleys, the Oak trees of Stellenbosch, the two oceans and freshness of a Cape spring. But I also miss the people and how they live in the Cape. I miss buying fish from the fishermen and women of Kalk bay. Squeezing into speeding taxi’s and crowded train coaches rocking with fat singing women from the black townships. It was when I began to allude to this part of the Cape that stumbled on some of Yvonne’s defining character.

“I would nehva get on a Taxi” she injected.

“Really? Why not?” I asked, a little surprised. Though I should not have been, as I have heard it from white South Africans before.

“It’s dangerous. No way man! I’m not getting on one of those, eva” she protested.

“Have you never been on a taxi?”

“No!”

“I mean in South Africa. As in those little minibuses that cruise up and down the streets of South Africa” trying to qualify my question as if to change the answer and finding it hard to believe that she had never, ever been on a taxi in South Africa.

“Have you seen the way those bloody things draav. Its dangerous. Not in my laaph. Its rediculous. They shouldn’t be on the rowd“

“Ok what about the train? Surely you have been on the train? It is such georgous trip from Cape Town to Stellenbosch by train. The views you get from there, nothing like that from the highway”

“No! That is even more dangerous. “

“Then how do you get around when you are home?”

“I have a kough, of koss”

But this conversation was exchanged with smiles and quite pleasently. I was very cautious about how I put accross my surprise. In fact, to a large part, I feigned surprise. I did not want her to think I had boxed her, given her a label, which I think I already had. I had labelled her as a nouveau white South African to whom the past is forgotten, there is no such thing as race (just people who behave stupid) and cannot understand why things don’t just work properly, as they do here in London. (“I kaunt understand why they don’t take them off the rowd“)

But this was another Sunday evening. In the two weeks since meeting her first, I had come to realise that she has not only watched every episode of each season of Lost, but also of every season of 24, CSI: Miami, CSI: Los Vegas and of CSI: New York. She hogs the TV every evening of the week to get her daily dosage of crime drama, where fictional professionals work, day and night to solve the crime. Where the characters use science, coffee, cliches and egos to get the job done at the expense of their personal lives. Yvonne just loves them. She herself proudly declares how many of them she has watched, how many straight hours of a weekend she has spent just watching episode after episode, without sleep or break, except for popping popcorn of course.

We stepped out into the cold and dark evening, each wrapped in a coat with hands in pocket, in search of popcorn. I had talked her into this little outing. For me, it was refreshing to be with a member of the house but not in the house for a change. And also, to get to know Yvonne better. A break from the usual and brief ‘how was your day?’ between the appliances of the kitchen and the tv. Though I know she is going back to Stellenbosch in 3 weeks, I feel a little attached to her.

We walked up to a corner store Off-License on Albion road, one bus stop away (“what’s the point of taking bus when you can walk. I laak walking. I don’t laak crowding on a bus or a train all the taam“). Everything on the street is damp or wet and the gutters are stuffed with manky dead leaves. The store is tacky and over crowded with two narrow corridors flanked with confectionaries and overpriced wrinkled vegatables. The lighting is dim and orange. The first Off-License we tried had only ready popped popcorn. Here, however, we found our prize, with a choice between two even.

Yvonne suddenly developed a craving for roast nuts and began to scour the crowded shelves for them. Just then a man burst into the store shouting and swearing. He reached over the till and counter, with a brandy and coke in hand, and tried to grab the dark and thin Indian man operating the till. The brandy-and-coke man was shouting…

“You fucking cut me! Look what you did to my arm! You fucking cut my arm up you fucking idiot!”

As he did this, lollipops and cigerrette lighters were crashing all about the place and he dropped the cash register, which then hung feebly by its power cord. As he swung drunkenly and shouted his profanities he smashed sweets off the counter and kicked the cash register, now on the floor, causing it to disgourge its contents of small change. Then he grabbed some the scattered money and ran out the store.

I was stunned. And so were the other customers in the store. Behind the ravaged service counter were two indian men and a lady that gave a european accent when she spoke. Some of the customers began to tidy up, but were asked not to, to show the police, already contacted by phone. A large middle aged man appeared, with a thick girth, grim countanance and eastern european accent. He asked the girl behind the till for ‘the stick’ which she handed over reluctantly, while protesting. Curiously, he had drops of blood about his arm and seemed to be the only one really cut. “Just leave it, the police are coming” the lady protested. “But look what they have done to the store” he said and walked out onto the street calmly.

We bought our popcorn (facilitated by a second cash register) and left, but not before I said to the shaken Indian “Do you know that guy, had you seen him before?” asking of the brandy and coke man. “No, I have never seen him before.”

“Wasn’t that hectic? I mean wow. Now we have a story to tell back at the house. It was worth coming out here for pop-corn” I announced, when we were beyond earshot of the scene and back onto the damp concrete pavement.

Yvonne seemed strangely reticent about the incident. All the other customers left the store speaking amongst themselves in hushed tones and there was an air of expectation outside the store, among the people milling about the street and the pub on the corner. The sort of atmosphere that follows a ’scene’. But Yvonne was averse. Gone quiet even. I was curious about two things. Firstly, about what the assault of th corner shop was really about and secondly, why Yvonne could not care less, or so it seemed.

In an attempt to draw Yvonne into talking about it I said “What the fuck was that about? That man barged in and attacked the man behind the till with the hand that still held a brandy and coke. And who runs that store? The Indians or those two europeans, the girl and that old man?”

“Aa don’t know, I didn’t see most of it. Aa was at the back of the store looking for roast nuts.”

“I think the europeans own the store and the two indians just work there” I added.

Now, I tried repainting the picture with racial brush. “Maybe it had something to do with the fact that the people who run the store are foreigners and the the guy with the brandy and coke is, or seemed to be british, from his accent. You can’t help noticing it.”

Then it came, and I knew it would. “Waa does everything come down to race with you. Waa Kaunt it be something else.”

“like what?”

“I don’t know, just not race.”

“Well maybe, but still it does seem strange.”