DIVERSION #1

A short indication of where we are going.

9.1

This is for if you were at that Pirates game, y’know the last one of the league and just to explain if you saw me coming out, like what I was doing, okay? So.

It’s normal. Long ago I’ve learnt to make a plan for the morning. I’ve got at least 10 hours to withdrawal, lucky I’m a smoker and not a spiker so, a plan for me is not trying to resist to leave over, but who I’m going to roll over, or plea to. Cause I got at least 5 hours before the sick sets in. So I step out into the hard afternoon Jozi sun and make my way to the bookstore. Step out of the old pool house in the abandoned garden of the condemned house in Rosebank near the mall. Climb the wall with all my stuff in one bag, never know, drop it at pick ‘n pay, must be back by seven, one walk through the mall, maybe I’ll see someone who I thinks I’m still who I used to be and get them to lend me some cash so I can leave out petty left for another day, whatever. 

That’s all background, I guess. I made it to the street, taking the middle west entrance, so’s I don’t have to go past Mike’s room, cause hw always takes whatever I’ve stolen with that fucking dirty knife of his, well lately it’s been the knife, which means he’s getting lazy or he’s lost the gun again, or whatever, but what pisses me is he always buys me enough out of my cash so that I don’t get too sick, but so’s I have to mission quickly so that hopefully I’ll be able to be robbed by him soonish again.

But no, I take the middle west entrance toward the sands passing the park junkies squabbling over some rich kid who’s stupidly asked for advice, Tom Dollar spots me and peels off because obviously he’s late in line for a hit and he’s offering me his pipe and I’m shrugging, no money, just here for yesterdays dash that I didn’t collect, this is code for fuck off and if he’s not sick he’ll go away, after trying the I’m sick please help about twice, anyway I’m striding past all of this toward my guy whose got brown, all the others have white which makes me jittery and obviously fucked even though I feel great.

And I need to look okay because I only managed a fifty out the mall, which is going to stop me getting sick but not fucked and if I want an easy mission this afternoon I’m going to spend a stone on James the rock head with no legs in the wheel chair, because then he’ll let me wheel him down to Park Station and spilt his sympathy earnings with me which normally means spending the night with him, and I won’t haul his wheelchair over the gate, so we have to sacrifice a hit each or a bag so we can book into a 40buck room, no blankets and how I hate that but he normally passes out so that I can escape around sunrise, and I always stash the extra I take from him so I can get a morning line of tee double you. 

So Nick spots me, about 2 weeks, he came out looking like a cop, fat, clean, in a puffy jersey by now already the jersey is sold, he’s sleeping in a fucked security hut and he’s back on, so he says he’s sick and he’s not but sometimes he runs a good mission and I wanna piggy back so we start scope-ing out where the dealers and runners are stashing, and we memorize the places, specifically Juniors cause his shit is real good, then we head down the road and argue over which cops to phone cause I got guys who are good and always find but don’t give so much to you because they gotta sell, Nick wants to go with guys he knows cause they do it for the arrest, not that they’ll get one, but Nick knows they generally give at least half the stash, maybe more and we gotta have some for his girlfriend, who is, guess what, sick, but anyway.

I’ve done this before on my own and with others, in fact while Nick was inside I did it a lot and was pulling in about R300 and a few bags a day, good living, but then the one guy ripped me off and the cop had marked the fucking note and then told the dealer and arrested him and I got fucked up, big time and had to fucking pay the boss about a grand before that weekend and those cops wouldn’t give, so I went to other cops, and then shopped those cops and it was all a mess but the dealer got paid and I got some cash and only a black eye, but anyway today I have a deal coming later where a friend said they’d give me some cash to buy a phone, which of course will be stolen from me that is, if you now what I never mind, y’know so we go with Nick’s guys because. And like I said it’s the day of the chief’s pirate’s league thing so we walk down to the stadium and mission some coins to phone and then we go wait in the spot for the officers.

The moment they arrive I sense trouble, they struggle to understand the directions to the spot and looking through the cardboard down onto the street we see them looking puzzled, risk # one I have to go down, risking being seen by users or dealer traveling up to the brow but so. I get them up. And we draw them the map. Usually it’s simple they know the area, but it doesn’t take long for me to realise I’m about to waste a lot of time and energy, they don’t even know the street names, or get this, what to be looking for, turns out after we watch the drive up the hill that Nick owes them a favour for when he was moffa touched they didn’t write up the smack he had on him, so anyway. What do you think? We sit and wait. For godamn nearly ten minutes like a fucking day, I tell you, we’ve given these guys maps, top sideways front, even a 3D interpretation (thanks to the excellent tutorage in technical drawing from a Mr. Bull, I think, or was that math?) then the little blue car pulls in and only the one gets out, the least intelligent, he’s wearing his blue search gloves and has now on his police jacket raincoat thing, and in bright daylight he’s walking up to where everybody knows is Nicks spot, cars are whizzing by, we are fucked, somebody is going to say something, no matter what this guy hands us we are fucked.

Did I say that this meant we were fucked, well, then he starts calling our names, like we must come out, is he serious?

I break open the cardboard and shout, there’s no one called that here, Nick says what if he’s… but I see nothing on him and he’s alone. Guys he shouts, will you come up with me, my partner has secured the area but we can’t find anything. We Run. 

Just like in the movies. 

Except we’re real junkies and there’s a chance he might just maybe have something, like y’know, I don’t know.

I go down, Nick thinks I’m stupid but way I see it these guys have fucked up any chance of us using my guys so maybe like we can play them, at least for maybe a twenny or fifty or maybe we do a quick entrapment over the other side, like near the Dorchester, where I don’t have to walk through on the way to the Sands and don’t need to go.

Anyway, what it is is that this cop is suddenly all eita! And sharp on us, I think cause Nicks like sort of black, but anyway, the fact that he speaks with an English accent is lost on them so, being 80’s cops but anyway he tells us straight, he shows us the bag, there must be I dunno, 20, 30 stone, can’t see any tee double you, but fuck we can trade or compromise, and then he says it, either you come up and point out the guy or I arrest you two for dealing.

I look at Nick, I think about it, Nick is like panicked, I say, and what else, like do I have to do it in court? No just show us the guy and we’ll take it from there, okay so it’s the bribe they want, a snap. I just pray that that little cunt Bonny is on the street cause he sold me shit last week and I said I get him and god knows everyone knows that I owe him it was all over the street and everyone knows if you’ve been munged, you do whatever to get out. 

Let me have a few hits, I’m gonna need them, he opens the bag, tosses them to me and we sit on the road, Nick takes out the pipe and we hit, we’re like zooming, and a call comes through on the radio, like we found a big one or we got one or whatever, so the cop says get in, I say no, not if you’re going to arrest someone, we’ll wait here, he thinks twice and then cuffs us to the fence pole next to the road, and then in a moment of compassion, tosses us a few more rocks, so then what I was saying was, if you were leaving the pirates league game in may, and you saw two guys handcuffed to a fence near the petrol station, and didn’t know what we were doing, we were smoking rocks and then we were zooming so hard we both broke our thumbs to get out of the handcuffs, which only hurt until we got back to the street and Junior told us that the cops had gone and got away with nothing, just a guy who wouldn’t say anything and was a local so legal, who they would pay some thing to when he got out, then he saw out thumbs and felt sorry for us and gave us each a bag of Thai so it wasn’t so bad in the end.

 

8.1

To the earliest time I can think of apartheid being something I was aware of.
We are on holiday, in the mountains at an old English leather, walking trails, oak tree kind of place, its late afternoon, “Doctor Snuggles” has just finished and the news comes on. South Africa will not be taking place in the Olympics.
“Why dad?”
“Because of Apartheid”
“What’s Apartheid?”
“I’ll tell you when you’re twenty one, now let’s go for that horse ride I promised”
And he shouts out the window in pidgin Zulu, for the boy to bring the horses round. The “Boy” is twice his age.

We are in the sky blue truck, I am a little person, we have to go past one of his building sites, when we get there all the people doing the actual building are black. There are a lot of them. When we leave, one of them has to come with us, and although there is plenty of space in the front, he sits on the back. Looking out the back window, it seems to me that he has sat on the back as a matter of choice because he seems to be enjoying the fresh air. At the next stop, I ask my dad if I can sit on the back too. He does not respond. But when we get back to the truck he opens my door for me and guides me in with the back of his hand.

Christmas shopping 1987, I have to take my Dad into town, to Grey Street, to show him the Jarmin Biggs suede shoes I want for Christmas. It is an Indian area, all the shops are run by Indians, as you pass from the parking garage to the arcades of Grey st, the racial mix changes drastically, My father is perceptibly made wary, “Is this safe?” he asks. I come here all the time. With the money from my newspaper route I buy all my clothes in the area (because by this stage I am a “trendy”), I buy all my records from Moola’s music; Dad has often warned me to be careful of the “Devious Choots”. As we are walking down the pavement, an old black woman and her middle aged daughter (I guess) shuffle toward us. I step off the pavement to let them pass, its good manners. My father gives me “A clip on the ear”; he smacks the back of my head. “Never get out of the way for them; they get out of the way for you. Especially now”. I have no idea what he is talking about, I am not yet 21, he has not explained apartheid to me. Nor has my history teacher, who has just quietly had me moved out of his class because I keep asking.