The virtual absence of passion

 Kate opened the meticulously folded paper sachet and carefully shook out half of the contents onto a small, black, rectangular marble slab.

 

“Marble isn’t exactly right,” she said. “I’m told it should be polished granite. Marble is too cold. The crystals need a little warmth.”

 

“Don’t we all,” I said.

 

Kate looked up and gave me a quick grin. Then she took a hobby knife blade and started methodically chopping the coarser than usual crystals.

 

“This is one hundred percent pure,” Kate said. “Uncut, just about straight off the plane. That’s why these crystals are so large. I watched my connection hacking the stuff off a solid, cock-shaped block of coke. This Colombian mule brought in the coke in five or six condoms he swallowed and smuggled into the country in his intestines. Down here they give the guy an enema and put him in a bath of water while he shits out the condoms.”

 

“Gives new meaning to the expression ‘shitload of coke’,” I said. “Imagine sitting on the Boeing with a fully condomised colon. Must be an uncomfortable feeling.”

 

“Yes,” Kate said. “You can’t go to the loo until you get here, hey? But the thing is that this coke is absolutely pure, uncut. You’ll taste the calcium. That’s the main characteristic, how you tell how pure it is.  This will be a kind of organic high.”

 

Kate’s steady application to the job at hand paid off. The coarse crystals were soon reduced to a sizeable little pile of much finer powder. As always I felt a frisson of sexual stimulation. Not a hard-on exactly, just a rising excitement, the shortness of breath and that slight dryness in the throat, the imperceptible tightening of the tummy muscles, the nice warm feeling of the rising male sap. Every now and then I idly speculated on the possibility and propriety of surreptitiously masturbating while watching Kate chopping the cocaine crystals. This fantasy tied in with my voyeuristic inclinations: I had never done the chopping myself and on just about every occasion where I’d watched someone else do it, that person had been Kate.

 

Kate used the blade to separate the fine, powdery crystals into four hefty lines. She searched around on the table, lifting up papers, moving books aside, before laying her hands on a plastic drinking straw. She often kept a clear Bic ball-point pen tube handy, almost the best for really good suction, and sometimes one of those thin little straws that come with the small Liquifruit cartons, but this was a cooldrink straw probably left over from a kids’ birthday party. She cut off a third of it and handed me the abbreviated tube.

 

“You can have first turn,” Kate said. 

 

The lines were of equal size, so I did not have to waste any time on deciding whether to be polite or selfish. I held one end of the short length of straw against my right nostril, sadly the only working nostril I still had although I must hasten to explain that this has absolutely nothing to do with any interesting drug habits I might have developed, pinched the other one shut, bent over the marble slab and in one continuous hoovering action snorted up a line. That done, I raised my head, sniffed and tasted the familiar chalky taste in the back of my throat. I handed the straw to Kate who followed my example with equal gusto. 

 

“Quite smooth,” she said with some satisfaction.

 

“Up the hatch,” I said as I took the straw from Kate for my second turn. 

 

Kate did the last line and both of us sat back, sniffed and savoured the smooth, seamless onset of the elation, the trademark of quality of good coke. If it’s cut with too much speed your nostrils burn and you feel a rush. You can be one hundred percent certain the coke will have been cut with a substance that could be either totally harmless and ineffectual or potentially life-threatening, or any variation in-between. The higher the actual cocaine content of the mix, the less you feel the high kicking in; you know it’s there when your conversation suddenly takes off into higher (pun intended) realms and you realise that a few hours have passed painlessly and effortlessly. The best part of taking pure coke is that when you are eventually ready for bed you can go to sleep and not wake up with that drained, debilitated feeling of the speed come-down which is partly the result of the fact that with speed you’ll probably never go to sleep.   

 

“Now I want a drink,” Kate said.

 

We left the back room (Kate’s office, where we could legitimately close the door to claim privacy) and returned to the lounge where Andre and De Wet were slumped in big easy chairs, watching a video.  De Wet had a fist wrapped around a Carling Black Label long tom can. The remnants of a six-pack skulked at his feet. Andre had a whiskey. He’d declined to share a line with us, partly because he’s a doper by choice and preferred to make a joint for himself and De Wet and partly, in fact mostly, because it was deemed advisable not to give any coke to De Wet. It was already a risk just to allow him to drink his beers, giving him something as serious as coke would have been spitting in the eyes of the gods. 

 

Kate poured herself a glass of white wine from the box of generic semi-sweet on the dining table on the other side of the room and lit a Texan Plain (her not so ironic pet name for them is ‘toxins’) while I went to the kitchen to pour myself a whiskey and water. The whiskey was First Watch, the best Canadian whiskey you could buy for R20,00 a bottle.  Kate sat at the table, paging through a recent Home & Leisure magazine. I sat down on the opposite side of the table.

 

“These people have stolen my idea,” Kate said, pointing to a full-page advertisement. She pushed the Home & Leisure across to me. “I had that idea five years ago,” she said bitterly, “for a video project I pitched. It was turned down because they didn’t have the budget. Fuck! That was my idea. I should’ve registered a copyright.”

 

“If you write it down, you automatically have copyright,” I said. “It’s only things like trademarks and patents that have to be registered. You can’t exactly copyright an idea. It’s probably an amazing coincidence, an idea whose time has come.”

 

“Whichever way you look at it,” she said, “I had that idea, that concept, five years ago and I couldn’t get anybody to give me the budget to make a decent production of it. Any production of it. Shit, man, that’s happened to me so often. I’m always ahead of my time.”

 

“A terrible place to be,” I agreed.

 

The coke was starting to kick in. One of the most reliable indicators of good quality coke, apart from the absence of burning nostrils when you snort it, is that there is no immediate rush, no precisely defined moment when you can feel it starting to work its magic. Speed is different: definite nostril burn, a noticeable rush -- I guess that’s one reason why it is called speed -- and once it locks into the synapses, there is that unmistakable edginess, the fidgety sensation of ants crawling on your skin. 

 

Coke, on the other hand, and the effect is magnified in direct ratio to the purity of the product, just seems to slowly, slyly seep into the bloodstream until you find yourself suddenly feeling better, happier, more talkative, positively overtaken by too many conversational topics to handle at once. You can have all of that with speed too, the difference with good quality coke is that the nervous edginess is absent. I must emphasise the importance of quality because it’s so seldom a pure product. By the time the consumer gets the crystals they’ve been cut with all kinds of weird stuff. Some dealers actually make a point of cutting it with speed to give their customers a tangible thrill for their money. Apparently there are people who complain if they do not feel an instantaneous rush!  I guess the difference between pure coke and the cut version is the same difference between second rate Scotch and a single malt. Once you’ve had the quality product you will never want to go back to the cheap one.

 

Anyway, with coke, the next thing you know is that you’re happy with the company and having a good time. Kate says that coke will make you arrogant and somewhat aggressive with it.  That may be so but in my experience coke has always been simply a mood amplifier, like alcohol, and has made me just feel happy. Then again, I have mostly done coke only with Kate and her company makes me happy anyway, sober, drunk or stoned. 

 

“Hey, Andre!” Kate called out, waving the magazine in the air, “have you seen this? These dwackheads have stolen my idea!”

 

Andre did not look away from the TV screen.

 

“Shush, Kate, we’re watching a video” he said, mildly irritable in the weary kind of tone one would use on a petulant child you have reprimanded many times before but who still hasn’t got the message, and you are so tired of her that you cannot even raise your voice anymore, the reprimand no more than a reflex action, not a serious warning.  

 

“Andre, they’ve ripped me off. Have you seen this? Someone else is making money off my idea!”

 

“Shush!” Andre repeated, now clearly irritated. “You’re too loud, Kate, you always get too loud when you do coke and when you drink. For god’s sake, do you have to raise your voice? We were sitting in peace here and quietly watching a video until you came in here and started making a noise. Just shush now.” 

 

Kate pulled a face at Andre’s back and mouthed ‘fuck you’ at him. She took another long pull from her drink, emptied the glass and refilled it.

 

“Shall we do another line?” she asked me.

 

“Why are you asking me?” I replied. “You know that’s a stupid question.”

 

“Yes, that’s true,” Kate smiled. “I forgot. Do forgive me.”

 

We returned to the Kate’s office where we snorted the rest of the coke with complete disregard for moderation.

 

“Well, I guess that is that,” Kate said sorrowfully. “Was that really a gramme? It didn’t seem like so much, did it? Do you think I should’ve made the lines smaller?”

 

“Doesn’t matter,” I shrugged. “We would’ve done all of it anyway, either in a few large lines or many smaller ones. It all goes one way.”

 

“What’s the time?” Kate asked.

 

“Just after nine.”

 

“Do you have any cash on you? Do you think we should get another gramme? We’ll split the costs. It’s still early enough to get hold of my connection. He’ll deliver but he’s gonna want to share some. Would you mind?”

 

I checked my wallet to see how much cash I had on me. There was about R200,00.  More than enough for half of a gramme. The coke was making me feel reckless and magnanimous. What was money for, after all, if not to be used for promoting pleasure and a sense of well-being. 

 

“What the hell,” I said. “Count me in.”

 

Kate phoned her connection from her office. From what I overheard, I guessed that the connection could not supply her but that he was willing to hook her up with a substitute dealer.  

 

“We’ll have to drive through to Town,” Kate announced once she’d put the phone down. “We’ll meet the merchant at a party in Gardens. His name is Tony, some Lebanese from University Estate who’s going to supply this guy, Barry, whose party it is anyway and there’s no way Tony will come through to Muizenberg for just a gramme. So, if you don’t mind, we’ve got to go through and meet him halfway. If you don’t want to come, that’s fine with me.  I‘ll go on my own but you’ll have to be patient.”

 

I knew precisely what would happen if Kate went on her own in her present state of chemical enhancement and if she were to land up at a party. She’d have a couple of drinks there, immediately sample some of the wares, and return many hours later.  If I wanted to partake in the stuff while I was still awake and in a party mood, I would have to accompany Kate on this mission. There was no danger that she would burn me on the deal, she would return with at least my half intact, but it would be later rather than sooner. That’s just the way she was with drink and drugs and social intercourse.

 

“It’s an adventure,“ I said. “Let’s hit the road. It’s only rock’n’roll anyway.”

 

“That’s my boy,“ Kate said. 

 

We returned to the lounge to share our news with the Andre and De Wet.

 

“Andre, we’re going through to Town to meet this Lebanese dealer,” Kate announced.

 

“Thank God for some peace and quiet.” André said.

 

It took Kate about five minutes to find the car keys. She never puts them down in the same place twice and as a result there was no such thing as grab the keys and run in that household.

 

“I think we should take the M5.” she said as we eventually settled in the car. “I’ve got to put some petrol in the car and I want cigarettes. Do you mind?”

 

“No. Whatever.”

 

Refuelled and fully supplied with ‘toxins’ we barrelled down the highway towards the City. The conversation was as animated and wide-ranging as it tends to be when the conversationalists are strung out on coke. We touched base on multiple topics but hardly covered any in depth on our uneventful journey.

 

Once we reached the City Bowl, Kate confessed that she did not know the guy whose party was our point of assignation with the dealer. Her connection had told her simply to ask for Barry and to identify herself. The connection would have phoned ahead to inform Barry of our imminent arrival and of the nature of our mission. 

 

It took us a while to find the house. We had the address but neither of us was too clued up on that part of the Gardens and each of us seemed to have a different mental picture of the street plan of the area we were searching in. The coke made each of us less tolerant of the other’s opinion and raised the levels of our own feelings of confidence in our own respective abilities to find a stranger’s house in an unfamiliar suburb.   

 

“Let me just drive around,“ Kate said firmly, after yet another ultimately fruitless suggestion from me. “I have this instinct for finding places I’ve never been to before. Just give me a little leeway. It might take slightly longer but I always get there in the end.”

 

“You’re the driver,” I said, a tad peeved by the delay and her manner.

 

It was about half past ten by the time we identified our destination. The quite audible deep bass thump of “rave” music came from a single storey Victorian style freestanding house with a bay window. The garden on the other side of a low white wall topped with wrought iron railings, was full of shrubs and low trees. There were not that many cars parked in front of the house. Either we were very early or maybe it was just a small party. I opened the waist high wrought iron gate and we walked up the flagstone path to a low, wide stoep. The front door was rather fancily carved and had a circular stained-glass centrepiece.

 

There was no doorbell but there was a brass doorknocker.  Kate used it.  We waited for a minute or two, then she banged it again. Another minute passed. We listened to the muffled, monotonous throb of the deep bass. Kate was about to knock for a third time when a short, chubby bald man in a Tupac T-shirt and big shorts opened the door. The bass throb seemed to rush out of the house to invade the peaceful residential area. It was kind of monotonously aggressive.    

 

“Sorry I took so long,” the man said. “I was on the phone to my ex. Are you Kate?”

 

“Yes, indeed, ‘tis I, ” she replied. “Barry, I presume?”

 

“Yeah,” he said. “Pull in, pull in. Have a drink. Tony’s not here yet.”

 

We followed Barry into the lounge of the house, the room with the bay window. It was unpopulated. A makeshift bar was set up on a table in one corner. Bottles of J & B whiskey, Absolut vodka, Southern Comfort, Beefeater gin, Olmeca tequila, Kahlua, Amaretto, a box of dry red wine, a box of dry white wine, Indian Tonic, soda water, orange juice in a box, a pitcher of water, ice in a plastic Smirnoff vodka ice bucket, a saucer with lemon slices, a salt shaker, and an assortment of glasses, some dirty and some clean.  Under the drinks table there was a large galvanised iron tub packed with big chunks of ice and cans of Castle Lite, Black Label, Amstel, Windhoek Lager and Hunter’s Gold.  A sofa and three easy chairs were arranged in a semi-circle facing the bar. There were bowls of chips, dips and peanuts on a coffee table. Thankfully the music originated from another room altogether. I guessed that the lounge was the chill out room of this party                      

 

“Help yourselves, guys,” Barry said. “There’s plenty. Some unfashionably punctual people are here already but the main body of the invasion hasn’t pitched yet. The other guys are down the passage surfing the Net, if you wanna go meet them. Tony said he’d be here round eleven but you never know with him. If he says eleven it’s closer to twelve. If you’re in a hurry to be somewhere else I can phone and light a fire cracker under his arse.”

 

“We’ll have a drink and a cigarette,” Kate said. “And we’ll be patient.”

 

“Great stuff!  Tony always has a good quality product. I can promise you the wait is worth it. Please excuse me, I’ve got to go make another phone call. Make yourself at home. Mi casa es su casa.”

 

I poured Kate a glass of white wine and made myself a vodka and orange juice. We wandered down the passage to find the other party people. 

 

The music came from the front room to the right of the entrance. I peered in. It was a bedroom. A mini-stack hi-fi was set up on the dressing table, booming out the anonymous ‘rave’ music that was currently faddishly passing for party music. This close to the source of the sound the approximation of a tune was still discernible but from any other part of the house all one heard was that subwoofer bass thump that made one think one was listening to a loop of the same tune all night long -- and I use the word ‘tune’ advisedly.

 

We found the others two rooms further down the passage. Three males, two females, all in their mid twenties. The men wore jeans and T-shirts or ordinary dress shirts. The women were skinny and dressed to kill: the short one with shoulder length feather cut blonde hair wore a brief, tight mini skirt; the taller one, with closely cropped flame red hair, wore equally tight, black, bell-bottom hip-hugger pants. Both wore skimpy crop tops showing off pierced navels.  

 

One guy was sitting in front of a PC. manipulating a mouse. The others were watching the monitor over his shoulders. He was obviously on the Net, skipping from porn site to porn site, pausing at the S & M pages. The onlookers were distinctly appreciative of the delights he dredged up. 

 

Kate and I stood around for a few minutes. I quickly grew bored with the experience, not being all that interested in computer porn and definitely not in S & M.   I cannot stand the time suckage of Net surfing.

 

I wandered off again, leaving Kate behind. I returned to the lounge to make myself another drink. While I was doing this a young woman entered the room. She was pretty tall, not to mention pretty, and on the baby fat side of slim.  Shoulder length black hair, big grey-green eyes, extremely pale complexion, large, baggy black T-shirt, black leggings, black trainers. The Goth revival.

 

“Hi!” she said. “Is this where the party is?”

 

“I think so,” I said, “but I’m only a visitor. Barry’s in back somewhere, making a phone call. The other people are down the passage checking out internet porn sites. Does that sound like a party to you?”

 

“It’s the right address, I think. And like this room is set up for a party, right? I’m Michelle.”

 

“Pleased to meet you.  While I’m playing barman for myself, can I get you anything to drink?”

 

“G & T, please, that’d be fantastic. Do you know if Darryl is here?”

 

“Dunno,” I admitted. “I know the names of two people here and neither of them’s called Darryl.”

 

“I suppose I am a little early. I thought I’d like, have a problem finding the place, you know? So, I probably gave myself like, too much time to find it when it was actually so easy to find. I suppose I suffer from the fear of being late, you know? and then I end up arriving like, hours too early.”

 

I made Michelle a generous G & T in a tall glass. She knocked it back in one gulp and held out her glass for another. I raised an eyebrow. If she’d driven her own car to the party she had better find somebody to drive her home afterwards, at this rate of gin consumption. Maybe the guy she was looking for was her designated driver. I mixed another G & T but this time I was less generous with the G part of it.  Michelle sipped at the fresh drink.

 

“So, what do you do?” she asked brightly.

 

Kate saved me by rushing into the room waving her empty glass at me.

 

“Honey, my throat is parched, absolutely arid,” she announced. “Quick, please pour me another glass of wine before I succumb. Who’s your new friend?”

 

“Michelle,” I said, “meet Kate. Michelle’s just arrived and she’s looking for Darryl. Is he in the other room?”   

 

“Don’t think so,” Kate said. “There’s a Donald, a Richard, a Karl, a Kim and a Tarryn.  No Darryl, unless he or she is using a pseudonym.”

 

“I suppose I am like, a neurotic idiot for being so early,” Michelle sighed. “I know that Cape Town parties only start at like, midnight but Darryl said I should meet him here, you know, at eleven. I think I suffer from like, party anxiety, you know?  I’m always too early. I guess it’s ‘cause I’m afraid I’ll miss something. I’m just like, neurotic about being on time. What do you think?””

 

“Whatever,” I said.

 

“A little anxiety never did anyone any harm,” Kate said. “Have a drink while you wait. It has been scientifically proven that increased alcohol consumption leads directly to anxiety reduction.”

 

Donald, Richard, Karl, Kim and Tarryn entered the room to replenish drinks and to munch on salty snacks, with or without dip. Barry also returned from wherever he had been. The usual common or garden general conversations broke out. Michelle circulated for a while, chatted to the two women and then one of the men, with whom she left the room. I stood against a wall, sipped my drink and observed.

 

An alpha male type cornered Kate between the drinks table and the wall and entertained her with his tales of reckless and raunchy adventures on a recent Irish holiday. He wasn’t openly hitting on her yet but he gave every impression of a man who was fully committed to furthering his aim of bedding an object of his lust before the night was out. For a brief moment I considered going to her aid, then decided that she did not really need my chauvinistic intervention and for all I knew she was enjoying his attentions. Kate was a tough cookie who’d had her fair share of wild romantic adventures and had always managed to avoid harm. By now she had heard all conceivable would-be smooth chat up lines ever invented. If by some peculiar confluence of circumstances she had not yet developed a sure-fire technique for adroitly evading a lech, then nothing short of pulling her away by her arm would have sufficed and that would have been too unsubtle.

 

I stepped out of the room and wandered down to the computer room. The PC was still humming but the monitor had been turned off. I switched it on and started going through the programme manager to see what kind of computer games Barry had.

 

“I think computers are so boring.”

 

I turned around and saw Michelle standing just inside the doorway, lazily swinging her empty glass and giving me a slightly unfocussed look. The gin was working its magic.

 

“Yes, well, in and of themselves they are inanimate,” I shrugged. “It’s what one can do with them that’s interesting.”

 

“Do you know these people?” she asked. “Like, who are they? I mean, I don’t know any of ‘em, I’m here only ‘cause Darryl invited me. They’re like, so shallow, they aren’t having conversations, they’re just like, exchanging stories, you know, like, each one has a bigger and better story to tell about the same subject someone else has just like, said something about, and then this guy was like, hitting on me, he got me to go outside with him, pretending he wanted fresh air and all he was trying to do was whisper sexy things in my ear, he thought they were sexy, you know, just trying to get me to like, fuck him. I mean like, he suggested we would be more like, comfortable in his car, his like Nissan Sani? You know, like, ‘let’s do it in the back of my like, Sani?’ In the street?  Does it like, say ‘I’m easy, fuck me’ on my forehead or something? Do you think I look like the type of woman who comes to parties on her own just like, looking to be picked up by some sex crazy sleaze bag? Do you think the men here just like, think of me as some kind of chick, you know, a bimbo who’s looking to be fucked?””

 

The gin was truly working its magic. I did not want to tell her that my take on the situation was that her putative paramour was most likely a simple man who was too impatient or too needy to consider a long-term investment in seeking knowledge of Michelle’s character or in cementing their prospects as a long term item.  

 

“I cannot comment on that,” I said, “for lack of information on the people you’re referring to.  Kate and I came here to meet somebody who isn’t here yet.  The party was just coincidental. We’ll probably be leaving soon after our guy gets here, so I guess I won’t really get to know any of these people.”

 

“What do you do?” she asked. “You didn’t say when I asked you earlier. Or is it like, some big secret?  You look like a person who has, you know, a lot of secrets or likes to make a person think he has.”

 

Once again I was saved by the intervention of a third party. This time it was Barry.

 

“Tony’s here,” he announced. “Go get Kate, she’s in the lounge. Bring her to the work room in the back yard.”

 

“Please excuse me?” I asked Michelle with a politeness fuelled by the relief of impending escape. “This is our appointment. If you don’t mind, we’ve got some private business to discuss.”

 

“Big fucking mystery,” Michelle sniffed. “Mister big secret. If you come back this way, will you bring me another G & T?  I don’t normally drink but tonight I need the, you know, reinforcement. I’m a little fragile.”

 

I took her empty glass and returned to the lounge. Kate had somehow gotten rid of the wolf at her door and was chatting with either Kim or Tarryn.  I informed Kate that it was time to meet Tony and made Michelle another drink.  When I got back to Michelle, she was sitting on the typist’s chair with her back to the PC console, repetitively swivelling the seat back and forth through 180 degrees and swinging her legs like a bored child.  Michelle gave me a surprisingly grateful look when I handed her the drink.

 

“Come back and talk to me when you‘ve done your like, secret business,” Michelle commanded and took a hefty swig. “You look like a nice guy, even if it’s a nice guy with secrets. Rescue me from the like, scum bags.”

 

I prayed for Darryl’s imminent arrival.

 

The brick paved backyard was small, with Vibracrete walls on the left and right hand sides. Running the length of the third side was a single storey outbuilding with an entrance door in the centre and a row of small, high windows that made the building resemble a campsite ablution block. I gave the closed door two loud raps of the knuckles.  Barry opened the door and Kate and I stepped inside.  There were trestle tables and tiers of wall-mounted shelves on three sides of the single room. About half of the working surfaces of the tables and half the shelf space was taken up by the machinery, apparatus, tools and detritus gathered by a typical Do-It-Yourself kind of guy; the other half of the working space was empty. There were also five plastic garden chairs and two stainless steel tube bar chairs. The floor space under the trestle tables was crammed with boxes and paint tins.

 

“The empty space is where my ex had her dressmaking stuff,” Barry explained ruefully.  “I haven’t had time to fill up the space yet. In fact, I haven’t been in here much since the divorce. The vibes seem kind of bad, you know what I mean?”

 

A stocky, powerfully built young guy with coarse, swarthy, unshaved features and a closely shaved skull sat on of the garden chairs. He wore a shirt with an absurdly colourful flower pattern, white denims and white Adidas trainers. 

 

“Tony,” Barry said, pointing at his new guest. “He’s the best guy in town for a quality product. He dedicates himself to customer satisfaction and he delivers to your door.”

 

“Just call me Mister Delivery,” Tony said as he stood up to shake our hands with a brief, powerful grip. He smiled easily but it was a perfunctory politeness rather than sheer good humour. Obviously he did not trust people he was meeting for the first time nor was he going to make a huge effort to make us like him. He probably knew very well that he was the most important person in the room.

 

Tony took a handful of those familiar paper sachets from his shirt pocket and laid them on a trestle table. 

 

“I’ve got ten grammes here,” he said. “Do you want them all? Maybe you should only take four or five now. I’ve got another delivery in Sea Point after this and the guys are in for at least three maybe four but when I get there they may go for five. You can have all ten if you insist but I really don’t want to have to drive back to University Estate and back to town tonight, if I can avoid it.”

 

Barry looked at us.

 

“How many grammes do you want?” he asked. “Three hundred bucks a shot. Best price in town, I can guarantee you that.”

 

Kate and I looked at each other, a telepathic debate. I shrugged. 

 

“A gramme,“ she said.

 

“Okay, great stuff!” Barry said. “Great stuff! Okay, Tony, I’ll take four grammes. That leaves five for you and you can make your other delivery. A win-win situation, hey? This gotta be a good party tonight, I don’t want to be caught too short. If I feel like a little more I can always connect with you again. That all right?”        

 

“One hundred percent,” Tony said. 

 

He gave Kate one sachet and four to Barry, pocketed the rest and sat down again, humming a tune. I took out my wallet and handed Kate my share of the purchase price. She added my notes to the ones she’d taken out of her bag and gave Tony the lot.  He was too cool to count the money. We must have looked too straight to even think of cheating him; uptight middle-class cokeheads who prided themselves on our business ethics. Barry did not hand over any money. I guessed he was such a regular customer he had an account with Tony.

 

“Feel like a toot?” Barry asked. “If you’re dissatisfied with the product Tony‘s right here to complain to.  I don’t know if he has a money back guarantee.”

 

Kate and I were keen on a wee exercise in morale boosting. It had been a long wait between snorts.  

 

“Shall we contribute some of ours?” Kate asked. “A communal toast to our kind    supplier?”

 

“No, don’t worry, I’ve got plenty, save yours for later,“ Barry said. 

 

He produced an old Style magazine from one of the boxes under the trestle tables, wiped its cover and laid it on the table, found a blade in a plastic tray on a shelf, unfolded a sachet and poured some crystals onto the magazine surface. He offered Kate the honour of chopping.  Barry, Tony and I sat in silence waiting for her to finish. Once Kate had made the lines, Barry took a pre-cut, and by the looks of it, well worn, length of Bic ball-point pen tube from a pocket in his shorts.

 

“Who wants to be first at the trough?” Barry asked.

 

“Let Tony have the honours,” Kate suggested. “He came to our rescue. I’m sure he can use a small reward for his troubles.”

 

“I don’t mind,” Tony said. “you can be first. The customer always comes first.”

 

“No, that’s a good idea,” Barry said. “Esteemed dealers first. Great stuff! You go first, Tony.”

 

Tony got up and disposed of his share with a loud, powerful snort. Kate was next, then Barry, and then me as ever the gracious host.

 

“So, is this hot shit or is it not?” Barry asked. “Great stuff!”

 

Kate and I agreed aloud that the coke went pretty smoothly up our respective nostrils and it seemed satisfactorily zippy although we knew that this sample was not as good as the coke we’d snorted earlier that evening. Definitely not directly from the intestines of a Colombian but thankfully the telltale nostril burn of speed was absent. We knew the coke had been cut with a less potent substance, we just did not know what the diluting agent was and how much of it had been added. You pays your money and you takes your choice.

 

“I’ve already perked right up,” Kate said, “and now I want a drink and then we’ll hit the road. Please don’t think we’re rude but we don’t want to intrude on your party anymore than we already have.”

 

“Nonsense,” Barry said. “You guys are absolutely welcome to stay as long as you like and party with us.  I like you guys and I think you’ll enjoy the other people who’ll be here soon. Stay, party on!”

 

“What do you think?“ Kate asked me.

 

“Whatever,” I said.  “You’re the driver. If you stay, I stay.  If you go, I go.”

 

“Let’s have a drink,” Kate said, “and then we can decide whether we feel like staying.”

 

Kate and I said our good-byes to Tony who stayed behind with Barry. We walked back to the house with a definite spring in our steps and a refreshed jauntiness and headed back to the lounge to freshen our drinks. On the way I popped my head into the computer room to see if Michelle was still there. She was not; there was another small group of Internet aficionados clustered around the monitor. This group seemed to have accessed a chat room.

 

Back in the lounge and going by the number of unfamiliar faces, I noted that fresh guests had arrived during our pause for refreshment.  Kate poured herself a glass of wine, gleefully recognised a face from her past and engaged the man in conversation.  I made myself another vodka and OJ and drifted into the bedroom where the hi-fi was still booming out those marvellously enjoyable thudding rave beats. I wanted to check whether there was not by some miracle other music to be found. I reasoned that even complete party animals wouldn’t want to listen to rave music all the time.  By that time even Celine Dion would have been a relief. 

 

To my surprise I found Michelle obviously engaged in the very selfsame enterprise.   She was flipping through a small pile of CD’s. It seemed that her search was fruitless; her body language was a textbook case of overt irritation.

 

“Have you found any techno?” I asked. “This mellow stuff is getting me down. I feel like jumping around.”

 

Michelle swung her head around, evidently so engrossed in her mission that she had not noticed my presence until I spoke.

 

Oh!” she said. “Like, Mister Mystery returns!  Do you know, there’s like, a five disc changer in this CD player and all the CD’s in it are just this, you know, rave stuff? So are all these other CD’s. There’s actually no interesting music here at all!”

 

“No techno? Truly disappointing. What is your idea of interesting music?”

 

“What is this like, techno fixation? Are you serious? It’s just headache on a CD, it’s not even proper music. I mean, music with melody and people who can sing, you know, songs with like, lyrics and meaning or songs that are not just repetitive beats, for god’s sake, music with actual people playing actual musical instruments. Songs you can remember the next day. There are so many classic songs that people like, really enjoy dancing to that nobody plays anymore. I know like, dozens of people who would rather listen to the classic songs from the Sixties and Seventies, even some songs from the Eighties, than to be subjected to be like, torture by this rave shit. Surely there must be like, a market for people who go to clubs or who go to parties and who want to hear, you know, good music. Why does nobody play that kind of music anymore?”

 

I wasn’t sure whether this was a rhetorical question.

 

“Well, if your argument about the numbers of people who share your musical taste holds water, why are there no clubs catering for the likes of you?” I asked.

 

“I don’t know.  How should I know? But I can like, guarantee you that most people would rather listen to good music than to this rave shit, if they were asked. It’s just that nobody actually cares, you know, nobody dares to complain or state their preferences, you know, just in case someone else thinks they aren’t cool or trendy. Rave is like, just a fad, anyway, isn’t it?  In a year or two there will be something else.”

 

“No doubt,” I said, “and it will be crap too.  In the meantime. we seem to be stuck with rave to the grave. Do you know there’s a bunch of new people here? Maybe your friend Darryl is amongst that number.”

 

Michelle brightened immediately, rave induced gloom a thing of the past.

 

“It’s about time,” she said happily as she flounced past me and headed to the lounge.

 

I inspected the stack of CD’s. Michelle was absolutely right. The only fun to be had was a collection of ‘rave’ music compilations featuring artists and songs I had never heard of before. I would not have been surprised if most of the featured artists were fictitious and that all the music was in fact produced by one or two people with unlimited access to studio time and technology and who simply found it more commercially astute to pretend to be a myriad of creative talents.

 

An insidious combination of empty glass and raging thirst drove me back to the lounge. Even more new faces had arrived and the room was uncomfortably crowded. Neither Kate nor Michelle were in view. I decided to have a beer and retrieved a Windhoek Lager from the tub. About half the contents of the can went down my throat in a single frenzied gulp before I wandered out into the passage.  I peeked into the computer room, saw nobody interesting, and headed on towards the kitchen, also full of unfamiliar faces.

 

The party was in full swing, buzzing madly. Although I was wired from the coke I  experienced a peculiar mental detachment and desolation as if I were the calm centre of a social hurricane. This was an unfamiliar house full of strangers and I could not feel part of any of the revelry at all. I was in the midst of chatter and laughter and sounds that passed for music, people were having animated conversations, and some were even dancing. The ‘vibe’ could only have been described as jolly and festive yet I was not part of it and could not share any of the hilarity or eager celebration of the party life. Sometimes coke made me more sociable, willing, even keen, to talk to total strangers, to joust jocularly with them by exchanging witty repartee, to allow myself to become temporarily attached and attracted to attractive women and vaguely entertain notions of seducing them. Sometimes coke acted as a truth serum. I would be talking to a stranger and be quite happily compelled to share my private life, personal tragedies, shameful secrets, and so forth, and then in extreme cases crassly express the desire to fuck my companion’s brains out. This approach sometimes won merit awards for brutal honesty but hardly ever got me laid

 

The coke was not much of a mood elevator. I wandered as lonely and lost as a little quasar in infinite space in search of something intangible in a place where only tangibles were on display. I went out the front door and sat down on the top step of the stoep and ruminated morosely until Kate found me. She sat down next to me and put her arm around my shoulders and pulled me towards her. For a few blissful moments I rested the side of my head against her shoulder.

 

“Feel like a pick-me-up?” she asked. “I’m about ready for a tiny nostril-full.”

 

“Whatever,“ I said.

 

“Cheer up, honey, why dawdle in the seven rooms of gloom when we have powdered happiness?  You don’t even have to add water. Come on, let’s go find a private place.”

 

We hastened back to the now unoccupied workroom. The few people standing around in the backyard ignored us but I still carefully closed the door to ensure privacy.  Barry’s magazine and blade were still lying on the tabletop but the Bic tube was gone. Kate took care of chopping the coke and I went back into the densely populated kitchen to look for a straw or close facsimile thereof. I had to rummage through a couple of drawers and cupboards before I found a box of striped plastic drinking straws. I took one and returned to the workroom.  The other people in the kitchen had barely given me a glance.

 

Kate was just slicing the drinking straw into thirds when Michelle barged in.

 

‘Hey, you guys, what’s happening?” she asked as walked right up to Kate to get a better view of what she was doing. “I was wondering like, why is Mister Mystery closing the door so carefully behind him. Up to no good, no doubt, this Mister Mystery. Good thing you weren’t, you know, having a quickie in here. Are you like, doing coke?”

 

I jumped up to close the door.  Kate retained her poise and remained nonchalant, even friendly. I steamed.

 

“We’re having a little something to improve our mood,” Kate said. “Would you care for some?”

 

Kate looked at me for confirmation of her generous offer. I seethed but remained silent.

 

“I’ve never had coke before,” Michelle said. “But like, I’ll try almost anything once, you know. Promise you won’t take advantage of me if I get stoned. I’m already quite fucked, you know. Your friend here pours these like, huge G & T’s he got me hooked on and I think he does it deliberately to get me out of my tree so he can get me to fuck him while he pretends to be Mister Nice Guy with the Big Mysterious Secret. He pretends to be the like, white knight just so he can ravish you.”

 

“That’s my boy,“ Kate said. “You just watch out for him.”

 

“Where’s Darryl then?” I asked.

 

“He’s not here, that’s all I can say, you know, he’s definitely not here,” Michelle said.  

 

I was beginning to wonder whether this Darryl was on our planet.

 

“Tough luck, Michelle,” Kate said. “Fortunately for you. there are people like us around. Generous people who share their drugs. Care to go first? Two each.”

 

Kate had re-apportioned the coke to make six thinner lines out of the four she’d prepared for the two of us.  Michelle took a short length of straw, gave us a smile that was a mixture of child-like naughtiness and slightly stupid, drunken delight, bent over the crystals with the straw firmly in position in her nostril and snorted like a pro.  She did her two lines one after the other, stood back and gave a couple of loud sniffs. The coke can wreak havoc on one’s mucus membranes. In accordance with our own slightly eccentric, age old routine Kate and I alternated our lines.

 

For a few moments the three of us stood in silence, each one savouring his or her own little epiphany, or whatever. As I’ve said, this particular sample was not all that splendid, but there was none the less at least the psychological thrill of having ingested an exotic, illegal stimulant with the added cachet of a long romantic history behind it. 

 

“Wow!” Michelle exclaimed, “that was like, definitely a new experience. But what’s the like, big deal? I don’t really feel anything, you know. Am I too fucked to feel it? Is this like the first time you have sex, you know, so quick and so like, unimpressive?”

 

“There is actually no immediate visceral effect,“ Kate explained. “This coke is not all that pure anyhow, too diluted. Wait a while, you’ll know it’s working when you suddenly find yourself talking too much. I want a drink.”

 

“Me too,” Michelle said. “There’s a funny taste in my mouth, like at the dentist. Mister Mystery Man, are you gonna make me another of those like, lethal G & T’s you do so well? I want another one even if you are going to attempt to like, seduce me with your mysterious mystery.” 

 

We returned to the lounge, if not arm in arm, almost comrades in arms. The house overflowed with party guests. I had to push my way through to the drinks table. I made Michelle a generous drink from a quarter full bottle of gin and an almost empty bottle of Indian Tonic, poured Kate a glass of wine from a box so empty I had to tilt it at quite a steep angle, and fished around in the beer tub for what seemed to be the last Windhoek Lager. These were the signs that it was almost time to go elsewhere.

 

“I think this party is about to pass the point of no return on investment,” I told Kate. “I think we should leave soon and maybe find a more congenial place to carry on drinking, if drink we must.”

 

“It’s not imperative,” Kate said. “But it would be a shame to drive all the way back so late in the evening when the early morning is so much better. Anyway, Andre was so grumpy when we left, he deserves to be alone tonight. Well, he’s got De Wet with him. They’re great people for watching videos. They won’t miss us and we don’t miss them. Whither shall we repair for further libations?”

 

“There’s a very nice place close by,” Michelle said. “I like go there all the time, we’ll have fun there.”

 

Kate and I looked at Michelle. Neither of us had planned on her being a part of the rest of our evening. Apparently it hadn’t occurred to Michelle to doubt that she would be anything but an integral component of our immediate future.  Kate and I looked at each other, testing our telepathic skills.

 

“What the hell,” I said and shrugged.

 

“Okay, Michelle, lead us to this place, be our navigator. We’ll follow you,” Kate said.

 

“I don’t know if I should drive,“ Michelle said.  “I’m like, very fucked, you know. God knows what the coke’s going to do to me, I don’t want to run the risk, you know, of being stopped by the cops in a like, wasted condition. Do I sound like, paranoid? I am very fucked.”

 

“Be a devil,” I said. “If this place is close by, the risk can’t be that big.”

 

“No, like, seriously, I am too fucked to drive. I’ll come with you and I’ll stick to coffee, double espresso, you know, and then you can drop me back here afterwards. It’s really not that far.”

 

So Michelle came with us in Kate’s car. The destination she directed Kate to was “close by” only by approximation. It was in fact situated in a renovated Edwardian  double storey on a corner property in the Lower Gardens, a pseudo Continental, late night cafe called Midnight Run.

 

The large, bustling downstairs room was too noisy and we climbed the rickety stairs to the first floor which was divided into small, semi-private, dimly lit alcoves with booths, horse-shoe shaped seats around a central table, probably cast-offs from the Spur steakhouse chain.  The place was a refuge from the rave music of Barry’s party. At Midnight Run the atmosphere was meant to reflect the upmarket sophistication of a romantic European past where men wore big suits and played cool jazz and women’s lipstick was always the darkest possible shade of lurid red. The background music was what used to be called West Coast jazz back in the 1950’s a music so smooth and cool, it was inaudible downstairs where a hundred, drunken high-pitched voices clamoured for attention.  The upstairs space was a safer haven for the jazz aficionado and definitely the spot for soft, sexy murmuring and languorous seductions.  

 

Kate chose a booth in the alcove furthest from the stairs. I slid in first and Michelle followed me, coming to rest with her shoulder nudging mine and her thigh pressing tightly and warmly against mine even though there was plenty room on the seat. I could have moved away but the warmth of Michelle’s thigh was not altogether unpleasant.   Kate sat on the on the other side of the table, facing us.

 

“Do you sell cigarettes?” she asked the waitress who’d followed us to the booth to hand us menus.

 

“There’s a cigarette machine downstairs,” the waitress explained, “outside the kitchen. Do you want to order drinks in the meantime, while you have a look at the menu?”

 

“How much change have you got?” Kate asked me. She rummaged around in her bag for her wallet and picked around in it for coins.

 

I gave Kate enough small change for a pack of cigarettes and she went off in search of her nicotine fix after ordering a glass of white wine. I asked for a Windhoek Lager and Michelle, contrary to her earlier firmly stated intention, requested a black Sambuca.

 

“I like your girlfriend, she smokes too much, you should get her to like, cut down” Michelle said, still pressing her thigh against mine. “She’s like, a lot friendlier than you are. How does she stand going out with you? I can’t abide moody people, you know, I bet you’re a sulker. I can’t take men who like, sulk. They hold grudges.”

 

“Kate is not my girlfriend,” I said. I did not think that my interpersonal relationship with Michelle would last long enough for her to verify her theory of me.  

 

The waitress brought our drinks. Michelle disposed of her Sambuca while the waitress was still at the table and immediately asked for another one. The waitress left and we studied our menus in silence. I was not hungry. Michelle was.

 

“I’m going to have a burger,” she announced, slapping the menu down on the tabletop.  “The burgers here are good, you know, best value for money in town. I always have the monkey gland sauce. Do you know like, what kind of monkeys they kill for the like, glands?”

 

I wondered whether this was a trick question.

 

“Uh ... abused monkeys from cosmetics testing laboratories?” I guessed.

 

“No, silly, I was like, pulling your leg.  You’re such an old sour face, don’t you ever smile? Lighten up, you’ve got two like, beautiful and vivacious women for company in a spot where all the, you know, cool people hang out. You’ve got it made, man.”

 

Kate’s return spared me further bullshit in this vein. She sat down, lit up a Texan and took a long swallow of her wine.

 

“There are a lot of trendies in this place,” Kate remarked.

  

“No shit,” I said. “It must be the music.”

 

“I like this music,” Michelle said. “It’s like, very sophisticated and always makes me think of Paris. La vie en rose, and all that, you know?”

 

“You’ve been to Paris?” I asked.

 

“No, not yet, but I will go there, you know, one day. It’s my dream.”

 

“I didn’t enjoy Paris much,” Kate said. “I think it was because we went there in winter and it was pretty dismal. I was on the verge of breaking up with my lover, the guy I was travelling with, so things were a bit tense. Romantic Paris, hey?”

 

“I haven’t seen Paris, nor do I want to,” I said.

 

“Old sour face spoilsport!” Michelle said, still tucked in under my wing. “I bet the mystery is like, do you ever smile and if so, why? And would we like, recognise it when we see it?”

 

The waitress returned to ask whether we were going to eat anything. Michelle ordered the monkey gland burger and a Sambuca. Kate asked for a Greek salad and another glass of wine. I requested another Windhoek Lager. We killed fifteen minutes with seriously vacuous small talk before the food arrived. Then Kate and Michelle stopped talking and tucked in. Each of them offered me something from her plate but I declined. The coke had taken care of my appetite for food although I was about ready for another line or two. 

 

“How about a rooty-toot-toot?” I suggested when Kate had finished as much of her salad as she was going to eat and lit up a cigarette. “My energy levels are starting to slide under the table.”

 

“Have we got a mirror or something similar? Have we got a blade and a straw?” Kate asked.  “I don’t think I’ve got anything in my bag. How’s that for being the well prepared drug fiend?”

 

“Pretty damn sad,” I said. “I can contribute the straw we used at Barry’s.”

 

I pulled it from my shirt pocket and handed it to Kate. Minute remnants of powder were still visible in the tube.

 

“I have a small like, vanity mirror,” Michelle said, searching in her bag. “I always carry a full make-up kit with me, you know, it might just become necessary to do a little repair work.”  

 

She produced an oval powder compact, lifted the lid and displayed what was indeed a small mirror. It would do.

 

“Well, I’ve never done it before,” Kate said, “but I’m told a credit card is good enough for the chopping. I’ll use my Status Account Card. I guess it’s actually appropriate. Now, where shall we do it? This corner is pretty private but it’s still too risky, don’t you think?  We don’t want to shock the waitress. do we?”

 

“The loo!” Michelle suggested. “In movies people like, always do it in the loo.”

 

“What a concept!” I said.

 

“The ladies or the gents?” Kate asked. 

 

“The ladies,” Michelle said. “I think it’s easier to like, smuggle one man into the ladies than, you know, like, two women into the gents.”

 

“Makes sense,” Kate said. “Michelle and I will go forth to suss out the location and then one of us will fetch you, okay? If you see the waitress while you’re waiting, order me another glass of wine, will you?”

 

They left, giggling like two schoolgirls sneaking off for an illicit cigarette behind the bike shed. I ordered and almost finished another beer while I waited. My bladder was starting to hint that I would soon have to visit the toilet facilities anyhow, drugs or no drugs, when Kate reappeared.

 

“The deed’s done,” she said. “I had to be innovative. Sneak into the ladies. There was no one else in there when I left and with any luck, if you run you’ll be alone too. Michelle’s in the stall farthest from the door, there are only two anyway.  Knock three times, not on the ceiling, hey.  I’ve had my lines, so I’ll hold the fort here.”

 

I paused in front of the door marked with the universally familiar sign of a woman’s public toilet.  I knew that we lived in a non-sexist world but old, ingrained habits and taboos die hard.  Not only was I intruding on a supposedly exclusive female preserve but it was for an illicit purpose too. I took a last look around to make sure nobody was watching, pushed open the door and scurried inside. The original residential room had been renovated to accommodate two toilet stalls and two oval basins sunk into a mock marble top in an enclosed cabinet unit. There was a large mirror above the basins. The room was mercifully empty of primping women.  Only the farthest stall’s door was closed.  I reached the stall in two strides and gave the thin plywood door three swift raps of the knuckles. The latch slid back, I pushed against the door, stepped inside and carefully closed the door behind me. Michelle was leaning against the partition and waved a hand towards the toilet. 

 

The powder compact plan must have failed to progress beyond the conceptualisation phase, for it was not in sight.  Instead, two decent lines of coke proudly displayed themselves on the shiny, possibly artificial, wooden surface of the toilet seat 

 

“All yours,” Michelle said, handing me the straw.

 

The fine crystals went up my nostril very sweetly indeed. In the same way the baseness of cheap wine seems to become less irksome after a few glasses, this coke seemed to support a feelgood factor that over an accumulation of snorts made one feel less disgruntled about the lower than optimum level of cocaine in the composite. 

 

I straightened up after my second line and caught Michelle’s exuberant, shiny eyes. The girl was excited. She was just about vibrating.

 

“Isn’t this fabulous?” she gushed. “I would never have like, dreamt I’d actually be like, doing coke, you know, in the ladies and with like, a guy as well. I can’t tell you like, how stoked I am!  It’s so exciting!”

 

“Whatever,“ I said as I lifted the toilet seat. “Would you please step outside for a minute? I need to pee.”

 

“So do I,” Michelle said, forthwith pulled down her leggings and panties, pushed past me and sat down on the toilet, T-shirt covering her lap, still giving me a huge, excited grin. She urinated with quite an intensity; the forceful sound of her urine hitting the water in the bowl made me think of the jet of water from a fire hose. When Michelle was done she reached underneath her T-shirt to wipe herself off and then stood up slightly hunched over to pull up her nether garments. I must say it was graciously and effortlessly done with the minimum of intimate exposure, in fact none. If it was exhibitionism, it was ridiculously coy.  

 

Michelle stood at the door of the stall and made no effort to leave.

 

“Your turn,” Michelle said. “If it like, embarrasses you, I promise not to watch. Are you embarrassed?” 

 

“Yes,“ I said  “but I guess that’s not your problem, huh?”

 

I turned my back on her, hauled out my urine conduit and pissed. My own stream of pee was wishy-washy compared to Michelle’s and struck the water in the bowl with considerably less force. This was no fire hose, at best a garden hose.  As I zipped up I wondered whether I had just lost a pissing contest.

 

I felt Michelle’s breath on the back of my neck, followed by her arms snaking around my torso. She pressed the full length of her body against my back.

 

“I’m like, so horny,” Michelle breathed into my ear. “Aren’t you horny too? Do you want to have sex with me here?”

 

Her hands moved down to my groin while she ground her pelvis against the back of my leg. I grabbed her hands, pulled them away from my body, turned around to face her and at the same pushed her away from me. She was quite flushed, quick little breaths, big shiny eyes.

 

“Not here and not now,” I said.

 

“I’m horny,” Michelle repeated with a slight edge in her voice. “I know you really want to fuck me. Just, like, admit it, okay?”

 

“I do not want to fuck you, much as it may surprise you,” I said. “Let’s go back to Kate.  Maybe it’s time we all went home.”

 

I opened the door to the stall and peered out. We still had the room to ourselves.   As I opened the loo door two women came in. They gave me funny looks but said nothing, possibly because they were too sophisticated to find my presence truly alarming and because I was leaving anyway. I waited outside the door for a moment but Michelle didn’t follow me out straight-away, so I returned to Kate who was contemplatively smoking and taking care of her wine.

 

“How was it for you?” she enquired archly.

 

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

 

“Nothing.”

 

“I’m not so sure about that. I had a brief encounter with Michelle. She grabbed me.”

 

Kate raised an eyebrow. I gave her a stare.

 

“I know nothing,“ Kate defended herself.

 

“Yes? She did not perhaps drop a hint?”

 

“Well, she did mention that she was feeling a teensy-weensy amount of sexual excitement but she didn’t in so many words confess to me that you were the object of her desire. It could’ve been just the coke, you know, and the girl does seem to be a tad pissed.  I was just teasing you.”

 

“Whatever.” I said grumpily.

 

Michelle rejoined us but this time around she slid in next to Kate. My unenthusiastic response to her overtures must have had an adverse effect on our friendship. Michelle came to rest tightly against Kate and actually put a hand on Kate’s thigh. She kissed Kate’s cheek, then nuzzled her neck and caressed Kate’s thigh.

 

“You are like, a really sexy woman,” Michelle told Kate. “Really sexy.  Very hot.  Not like old cold meat over there. Have you ever had sex with a woman?”

 

Kate was amused by this line of questioning and not invulnerable to the attention and caresses. She’s had her share of ‘experiences’ with women, from adolescent experiments to mature expressions of sexuality. Kate was a sensual creature who was not prepared to toe the line of sexual orthodoxy if it meant that she was to be restricted to only one gender or one sexual practice.

 

Kate turned to Michelle, embraced her and kissed her full on the lips. Michelle was initially overwhelmed by this turn of events and it took her a moment or two to fully reciprocate. It was a long, passionate, arousing kiss. Even I felt a stirring of the loins.

 

“So, how about it?” Kate asked Michelle when they came up for air. “Your place or mine?”

 

“Wow!” Michelle breathed loudly.  “Now I’m like, really horny. I’m wet for you.”

 

Kate pulled away from Michelle and shifted up on the seat to put some space between them.

 

“Is it the coke?” Kate asked quietly. “Or is it just me?”

 

“I know I’m really fucked,” Michelle said and moved closer to Kate, “but I want to have sex with you. You’ve turned me on. I don’t care if it’s the coke, I want you.”

 

I was starting to feel completely superfluous. The waitress came past and we renewed our respective drinks orders.  When the drinks came Michelle downed her Sambuca in one gulp, Kate emptied about half of her glass with one swallow and I sipped at my beer.

 

“I would love to get to know you better,” Kate said, “but maybe not tonight, it wouldn’t be wise, I must think this over before we do something rash.  What about your friend Darryl?  Maybe he’s arrived at the party by now. Shouldn’t we go back there and see if he’s put in an appearance?”

 

“No, not necessary,” Michelle confessed. “I lied about him, I made him up. Like, I don’t even know anybody called Darryl. I was just like, passing the house, I heard the music and it sounded like a party.  I walked in, you know, like, gatecrashed, and made up that story so I could like, have a reason to be there. Not even the host always knows everybody who is, you know, supposed to be at the party, so it’s easy to like, invent the name of some person who’s invited you. So, there’s no boy to be worried about. My place is like, around the corner from Barry’s house, actually. I have a room in this like, commune. We can go there. Let’s go now.”

 

“What do you think?” Kate asked me. “I’m very tempted.”

 

“Let your conscience be your guide,” I said.

 

“You’re not coming along,” Michelle yelped. “I want to have sex with Kate.  You like, had your chance and you wouldn’t, so fuck you!”

 

“I might want to watch,” I explained.

 

“That’s true,“ Kate said, always supportive.  “Anyway, he’s with me and you can hardly expect me to abandon him. It’s a long way back home.”

 

“He can like, sit outside in the car,” Michelle decided.  “He’s not coming in to, you know, watch us. That’s sick.”

 

“No, it’s not,” I said. “It’s an honest if slightly less conventional expression of sexuality.”

 

“He’s just being facetious, don’t take him too seriously,” Kate told Michelle.       

 

“Fuck him!” Michelle repeated.  “Kate, I want you to come home with me, will you? Let’s go now. I am really very, very horny. Kate, you are like, a terribly sexy woman and I know you’ll be good in bed and so am I.  I promise you.  It’ll be great, I promise you.”

 

“How can you possibly resist,” I said.

 

“I like you, Michelle, and I don’t want to offend  you, but this isn’t the right time for a sexual adventure, maybe some other time,” Kate said in a placating tone of voice.  “I think it’s time we all went home before we get too silly and while we’re still friends.”

 

“Pity,” I said. “It might have been a good show.”

 

“Fuck you!” Michelle hissed. “Like, I knew you were a perv when I saw you at the party. You are just like all the other men. They see like, an attractive, sexy young woman and all they check out is like, the size of her tits and all they have on their tiny, sick little minds is how to get into her pants. I do have a brain you know. I am capable of having an intelligent thought.” 

 

Michelle turned on a wheedling, little girl voice. “Kate, please come home with me? Please?”

 

“I haven’t thought about your tits at all,“ I said. “Would you like to share them with us before we move on to your brain?”

 

“Now, now,” Kate admonished me, assuming that I might turn ugly. “Listen, Michelle, it’s late and we’re all a little drunk and high and tired, so I suggest we call it a night and go home while we’re still friends. This simply isn’t the right time.  Give me your phone number and I’ll call you.”

 

“Will you?” Michelle asked hopefully.

 

“Yes, I promise. We’ll make a plan to go for drinks, just the two of us, okay?”

 

“Okay,” Michelle said. 

 

Kate carefully wrote down Michelle’s phone number on an envelope she had in her bag. I was not sure whether this was simply a diplomatic kiss-off from Kate or a real pledge to make an assignation. For all I knew Kate truly found Michelle attractive and found the prospect of a sexual liaison sufficiently exciting to keep open the lines of communication. Taking a phone number was a harmless open-ended assurance, no worse than a white lie.

 

We went downstairs to pay the bill, which Kate and I shared.  Perhaps predictably Michelle confessed that she had no cash on her and asked to “borrow” the price of her meal and drinks.  She promised faithfully to repay Kate the next time they saw each other. Maybe Michelle intended this promise to be Kate’s incentive for remaining in contact.

 

When we arrived at Michelle’s house she made one last effort to persuade Kate to come in, perhaps to stay the night.  I remained excluded from this hospitality.  Kate remained loyal to me and again regretfully declined the invitation. Michelle pouted and went off in an undisguised, disappointed huff after exchanging a tongue-entwining goodnight kiss with Kate albeit a less passionate one than their first co-production.

 

“Interesting girl,” Kate said as we drove away. “Evidently a troubled soul.”

 

“No doubt,” I said. “Would you have taken up her offer if I weren’t there?”

 

“I don’t know. Saying no had nothing to do with your presence. You had something to do with it, obviously, but there were other considerations. She is very sexy but she was very drunk and full of coke. Maybe it was only drunken bravado, an attempt to salvage her lost self-esteem, revenge for your boorish refusal to be seduced by her. I’ll bet tomorrow she wakes up with a tremendous hangover, doesn’t remember what she said or did tonight and if she does, she’d probably freak out from embarrassment if I phoned her and asked her out for a drink. Or she’ll have a drink with me and just want to be best friends. You never know with these young fucked-up girls. They talk big when they’re out of it. The anger comes out.  That’s when their confused sexuality erupts in full force. When they’re pissed they think they want a woman because all men are bastards. They sober up and the hangover hits, they want their bastard back.  I’ve learnt the hard way. Ten years ago I wouldn’t have thought twice. I suppose I’ve matured.”

 

“So, do you think there’s still a chance for me?”

 

Kate gave me a look as if to say ‘save your facetiousness for someone else, mister.’   I returned the look with a blank stare. She knew me too well to be easily taken in by my bullshit but she also knew that sometimes I was facetious purely to cover up my very serious intentions and she could never be sure exactly of when the bullshit stopped and the seriousness started. Over the years I’d made a science of disguising my true feelings behind sarcasm. Quite heavy sarcasm too.  Back in the old days, when I started out as a lonely, confused teenager, I relied on irony and sardonic humour but as soon as I realised that I was being too subtle or just plain obtuse for most people, I dropped the irony and applied myself to mastering venomous sarcasm. It’s become so bad that my regular tone of voice often makes me sound sarcastic when I am not. 

 

“Oh well, rule number one is never fuck a person who’s crazier than you are,” I stated for the record.

 

“Then you have no worries,” Kate retorted.  “What’s the time?”

 

“Just after one,“ I replied after squinting at my wristwatch. “Why?”

 

“Are you in a hurry to go back?”

 

“Not necessarily.”

 

“Well, I thought, since we are in the area, so to speak, why don’t we pop over to Camps Bay to say hello to a connection of mine. We’ll just have a quick drink or two and then we can go back, okay? Is that all right with you?  I must have another line before I can face the long drive home.” 

 

“You’re the driver,” I said.

 

Kate drove up Kloof Nek Road and continued along Camps Bay Drive before turning of to follow a winding downhill road, then turned off into a side street and stopped in front of a double storey house facing the sea. The lights in the house were still on.

 

“This is Andrea’s house,” Kate explained. “She‘s an account exec. Her boyfriend’s a male model, Thomas Kiernan, you‘ll probably recognise his face. He’s much younger than she is, about twenty-four, a big sexy Irishman. She’s thirty-eight or nine.  Andrea met Thomas on a shoot in the Seychelles last year but he moved in only recently.  You’ll note I’m not going to pay much attention to him. Andrea’s really insecure right now, very jealous. Her divorce came through a couple of months ago. Her ex-husband dumped her for her P.A. in the agency, so you’ll understand why Andrea is suspicious of any woman who pays any attention to her boyfriend. I know it sounds complicated but Andrea’s all right really, she’s just a little vulnerable right now.“

 

“Thanks for sharing that with me,” I said. “Does it mean I’m not allowed to speak to this Thomas either?”   

 

The house was built against a steep hill.  We had to walk up a long flight of stairs to get to the front door. While Kate rang the bell I admired the sea view from the front stoep. The porch light went on and we heard the sounds of someone manipulating a security lock on the other side of the front door.  The door was opened by a small, thin blonde woman in a big, loose peach coloured top with a deep V-neck and cream coloured palazzo pants. She was barefoot and obviously bra-less. She wore no jewellery except for a thin gold chain around her neck. Finger and toenails flaunted a dark red shade of nail polish, Midnight Passion Plum or something.  Her deep tan was that overdone shade of brown I think of as melanoma chic; the kind of tan that used to be called healthy until the evils of UV rays and the disappearing ozone layer were linked.

 

“Kate, my angel!” she exclaimed as she gripped Kate in a bear hug and gave her a wet smack on the cheek. “Long time no see. Where have you been?  Come in, come in. guys, I’m so happy to have company. Thomas is off on a shoot, I’m all on my lonesome watching some terrible movie on M Net I know I shouldn’t bother with, I’ve probably seen it already, I don’t feel like going to bed either.  I’m not happy to be in that big bed on my own, I can’t get to sleep without a pill.  Come in, let’s have a drink and catch up on the lifestyles of the rich and infamous.”

 

Kate introduced me to Andrea who greeted me quite warmly but settled for a firm, dry handshake as alternative to a rib crusher and a smooch. Andrea led us to a lounge furnished in a severely minimalist style. Bare floorboards, no rug, two large black leather couches positioned in an L-shape to face a very large screen television set and VCR, between the couches and TV set there was a glass top coffee table with a blonde wood frame, against the rear wall a Fifties style sideboard acting as drinks cabinet, behind the couches a small side table with a mini hi-fi, and book-laden shelves took up one entire wall. A ceiling-to-floor picture window gave a panoramic view of Camps Bay and the Atlantic Ocean.

 

“What will you guys have?” Andrea asked, poised at the sideboard. Kate and I were sitting on one of the couches. 

 

“White wine,” Kate said, “if you have.”

 

“Whiskey and water,” I said, ‘if you have.”

 

“Chardonnay? Hugely fashionable in the States, sweetie. J & B or Jim Beam, my darling?” Andrea asked.

 

“Chardonnay, s’il vous plait,” Kate said.

 

“Jim Beam,“ I said.  “J & B is too harsh for my untutored palate.”

 

“Will you be a dear and go make yourself useful in the kitchen, my angel?” Andrea asked me. “The wine’s in the fridge, the corkscrew is in the middle drawer next to the fridge. There’s ice in the freezer, please bring me a bottle of Schoonspruit, will you?”

 

Andrea took my place on the couch next to Kate and commenced interrogating her on life, love and the whole damn thing while I went to the kitchen to play waiter. The kitchen was very modern and very new: stainless steel cupboard doors and faux granite surfaces, stainless steel appliances, even a stainless steel refrigerator.  Four bottles remained from a six-pack of 375ml plastic bottles of Schoonspruit spring water and there were three bottles of Chardonnay from a wine estate I’d never heard of. I opened a bottle of wine, took a bottle of Schoonspruit and put some ice cubes in a jug and after a brief search for glasses and a serving tray, I took a load through to the lounge.

 

Kate took her wine and lit up a cigarette. I made myself a weak bourbon and water and sat down on the unoccupied couch.

 

“Sweetie, you’ll never guess what! I’ve given up smoking!” Andrea boasted, swigging her water out of the bottle. “This house is officially a smokeless zone but it’s all right, I won’t mind of you smoke. A little secondary smoke can’t shake my resolve.  Kate, can you believe it?  It’s been three months and fourteen days since I’ve had my last cigarette. I also don’t drink anymore, hardly, only on very special occasions.  Nowadays I love my natural spring water. Aren’t I so virtuous it makes you sick? It’s Thomas, you know, he is such a puritan. I’ve stopped drinking and smoking for his sake. Not that he’s pressurised me, I know it’s hell for a non-smoker to have to share the space of a smoker, you know. I’m telling you, sweetie, I feel so much better, healthier, no smoker’s hack in the morning, my skin is better, all that stuff.  You should try it, Kate, give your lungs a rest.”

 

“I don’t think so,” Kate said firmly. “There are many things I can go without, I can go without my Mum but I must have my cigarettes. And a drink when required. I couldn’t possibly function otherwise.  Are you against drugs as well?”

 

“Not absolutely,” Andrea smirked, ”but I am ever so discrete when Thomas is around. He disapproves of drugs too.  Kate, he lives a very pure and spiritual life, that boy. He’s Buddhist, you know. He says the inner peace and stuff help him get modelling jobs. He’s such a centre of tranquillity in this house, Kate, he’s getting me to meditate with him.  I’m telling you, sweetie, I’m going to be a whole new happy person soon!”

 

Andrea just about jumped up to do a happy dance for us. I did not know what she was on but it sure seemed to have a positive and powerful effect. Probably not methamphetamine. 

 

“Would you be interested in ... uh ...  sharing a substance with us?” Kate coyly enquired. She had to distract Andrea from her out of body experience to get us back to basics, the purpose of our mission.

 

“Substance? Coke? Well, yes, I might have some if you twist my arm. Sweetie, is that why you’re here? Kate, are you trying to tell me this isn’t just a social visit to brighten up my dull, lonely life? You were looking for a safe place and a generous hostess?”

 

“Afraid so, Andrea,” Kate admitted. “much as I love you. We‘ve been having a bit of a rave tonight and it’s a long drive home. We need sustenance. Anyway, I thought you might like some.”

 

“Kate, please, my darling, make yourselves at home! I won’t say no if you want to offer me some. The quality of the coke I’ve had lately hasn’t been that great. I’m telling you, Kate, you just can’t get a decent product these days. Isn’t there a consumer protection bureau one can protest to? Please entertain yourselves for a while, my darlings, I’ll be back in two flicks of a tiger’s tail.”

 

Andrea was out of the room for a few minutes. We heard the sophisticated whine of an expensive microwave oven.  I poured Kate another glass of wine and freshened my drink. Andrea returned with a heavy, black dinner plate about the size of an LP record, and a Minora blade. She put the plate and the blade on the coffee table and took the sachet from Kate.

 

“Shall I pour?” Andrea asked. “I did the plate for just a few seconds, that should be okay, hey?”

 

“I think there‘s about half a gramme left, give or take a few milligrammes,” Kate said.  “We’ve been generous to ourselves tonight.”

 

Andrea knelt at the coffee table, unfolded the sachet to pour roughly half of the crystals onto the plate and started chopping. Kate and I edged forward on our seats. The demon coke lust was upon us again.  Andrea managed to produce a fair sized heap of powdered crystal.

 

“Three humongous lines or more smaller ones?” Andrea asked in a spirit of democratic participation, blade poised over the coke. 

 

“The eternal debate over quantity versus quality raises its ugly head,” I remarked, “except this time it’s just different parameters of quantity.”

 

“Make six big lines,” Kate suggested. “Let’s do this ugly thing big time!”

 

“Righty ho,” Andrea said and expertly divided the coke into six heaps, then carefully flattened out the heaps into lines. “My darling, do you have a tube-like apparatus on you? Or a crisp bank note?”

 

I still had the plastic drinks straw from Barry’s, my party favour. I handed it to Andrea. She wasn’t shy and despite the rule of etiquette that a hostess should let her guests go first, she snorted her allotted two lines, threw her head back and gave a couple of mighty, nasal passage clearing sniffs. Andrea handed the straw to Kate who also dispatched her lines without much ado and then gave me the straw. I was reminded of the members of a relay racing team handing on the baton to each other.

 

I knelt over the plate and snorted. The first line went trouble-free up my nose although I felt a tiny hint of congestion at the back of the passage. I gave a mighty sniff to prepare myself for the final ridge before the summit and again applied myself.  Something was not working the way it was supposed to. It was difficult mustering enough suction power in my useful nostril. Only about a third of the second line came up the tube and only a fraction of that portion actually made it all the way up to my nose. I pinched the left nostril even more firmly shut and tried again. Another risibly small section of the line made it into my nostril, the crystals kind of flopped into the nostril, instead of shooting up into it, leaving a scattered trail of crystals on the plate, about half of the line. Try as I might I just couldn’t manage the rest. I sat back on my heels and shook my head as if this action would clear my clogged up sinuses. There was phlegm at the back of my throat.

 

“I seem to suffer from nostril failure, call it cocaine strain,“ I complained. “There’s no more snorting power left in my nostril. To coin a phrase, this doesn’t suck.”

 

“My darling, how devastating!” Andrea exclaimed. “A big, strong boy like you!”

 

“Pretty damn sad,“ Kate agreed. “You won’t mind if I have your share?”

 

“As if I could stop you,” I said. I reckoned it was yet another example of how the strongest survive. My nasal passage was full of runny mucus and I had to keep sniffing to clear the air passage. It was like suffering from a bad cold. I tried blowing my nose but almost no snot came out. It was not a cold.

 

Kate did the rest of the coke on the plate and licked up the residue. She smacked her lips and returned to her couch where she pulled up her feet under her and lit up a cigarette. She inhaled deeply and with a triumphant and mocking gesture blew the smoke in my direction. 

 

“My glass is empty,” she said.

 

I poured her another glass of wine and stumbled off to the kitchen to get ice for my bourbon and another bottle of Schoonspruit for Andrea. A CD was playing when I got back. The music sounded like a piano concerto for one finger against a background of twittering birds, chirping insects and summer breezes wafting through lofty pines. Andrea explained that one more benefit of Thomas’s presence in her life was that he had introduced her to music specially crafted for truly soothing the savage beast. 

 

Kate decided she needed another line and chopped more coke but this time I told her in advance I wouldn’t be having any, to allow my nostril breathing space, in a manner of speaking.  Andrea was still strong and between the two of them they finished the rest of the coke. This new infusion of chemical happiness inspired Andrea to run off to another room to fetch a thick photograph album and with proud running commentary she treated us to dozens of photographs featuring, amongst other bodies, Thomas. They were mostly stills from modelling shoots and ranged from bronzed beach boy in a swimming trunks to captain of industry in sober yet stylish suits, and all the variations on the clotheshorse theme in-between. In a number of the photographs Thomas was teamed up with stunningly beautiful female models. Some photographs featured Andrea and Thomas in happy holiday mode. Thomas was truly a big and handsome trophy boyfriend.

 

Andrea’s euphoria over the wonderful Thomas faded a somewhat when she started talking about his current shoot. A rueful exposition soon turned into a full-scale moan on the theme of his frequent absences from home to do shoots in exotic locations with even more exotic, seductive women.

 

“Sweetie, I’m telling you, he’s simply surrounded, surrounded, with luscious, basically naked female flesh all day long, firm, perky young tits and tight, high butts.  I lie awake at night and agonise, absolutely agonise, about those young tits, those round butts.  I get so crazy.  I wonder if he’s fucking those girls, how many different ones he’s fucking, and I go insane, I have to take two pills to get to sleep.  Kate, Thomas swears blind he is faithful to me but I wouldn’t trust him, the temptations are just too great. He’s a man. Wouldn’t you be tempted, my darling? The poor boy is so good-looking, the girls simply fall at his feet.  My darling, would you be strong enough to say no if your girlfriend was far away and would never find out?”

 

“Probably not,“ I replied, more out of deference to the Socratic dialogue than out of absolute moral conviction.

 

“Precisely, my darling, abso-fucking-lutely precisely. He’s a healthy young guy, he’s not a eunuch. Twenty-year-old horny model girls with perky tits. But what can I do, sweetie?  Kate, I’m telling you, sometimes I feel just like the old bitch back home, waiting for her young lover, I can’t complain or he’s going to walk out and go somewhere else.  He doesn’t need my money, he doesn’t need my status, Kate, and he can fuck anyone he wants. What’s to keep him here?  Do I sound paranoid? I take care of myself, I look in the mirror and I think to myself, damn! but you look good for your age. No, you look good, period!  Kate, I’m going on for forty, Thomas knows it, I don’t think he wants a mommy, he wants a sexy woman who looks good when she’s out with him. Well, I can do that but more often than not at night in bed I want the lights off just in case he sees too many wrinkles. Don’t get me wrong, the sex is good. Nothing wrong with my pussy, it’s just my wrinkly elbows and my tits are starting to droop, gravity’s pull and all that, and the Royal Queen Bee jelly no longer works as well as it used to, I need more make-up, more time in the mornings to put on the face, it eats me.  Am I rambling? I’m sorry, my darlings, my anxieties tend to slip out when I’m getting loose. I wonder if there’s more coke in the house, maybe another gramme I’ve overlooked, sometimes I hide some for a rainy day, I’ll go have a look, shall I? Be back in two flicks of a tiger’s tail.”

 

Andrea skipped out of the room, a woman on a mission of hope.

 

“A little anxiety never hurt anyone,” Kate said. 

 

“This sounds like a lot of anxiety to me,” I said. “Makes me think of that Led Zeppelin song Ramble On.  Maybe she should get a boyfriend closer to her own age, don’t you think, or an older man altogether? Old man’s darling.”

 

“What, and no longer be the envy of all her friends? Give me a break.”

 

“They envy her the anxiety over a much younger hunk of a model boyfriend who’s always surrounded by luscious young model girls? Give me a break.”

 

“I don't think she shares that anxiety with her friends,” Kate remarked thoughtfully. “They just see the happy couple. When you flaunt your toy boy you don’t let the public see you desperately pulling at the leash.”

 

“Whatever,” I said.

 

Andrea danced back into the room waving a Berocca Calcium tube and humming a happy tune.

 

“Happiness is!” she crowed. “My darlings, it’s time to rock your world!”

 

“Did you find your secret stash?” Kate asked hopefully.

 

“Yes and no, sweetie, yes and no. This isn’t coke, this is even better than the real thing, Kate, I’m telling you, if you want to burn out your nostrils by aiming a chemical flame-thrower into your nasal passages, this is the stuff. This is Chernobyl.”

 

“Cher knows Bill?” I asked. “Is that Clinton?”

 

“My darling, you are so funny, so fucking funny. I’ll forgive you.”

 

Andrea popped the top off the tube and pulled out a plastic bank bag holding a number of thumbnail-sized sealed soft plastic capsules each containing a small amount of white powder.

 

“This, my darlings,” Andrea announced, “is the purest amphetamine you’ve ever had.  Pure rocket fuel. You’ll take off and land next year.”

 

“We’re never going to sleep tonight,” Kate said. She didn’t sound exactly perturbed. If she was worried about her beauty sleep she could easily have said no. Not that Kate ever said no to a drug. Well, hardly ever.

 

“Thomas imported the Chernobyl, if you know what I mean, from Germany, he did a big Mercedes Benz corporate thing,” Andrea explained. She sliced open three of the capsules and dumped the contents on the plate in three little piles, chopped the crystals and made a whole lot of thin lines.

 

“I’m doing these lines smaller than the others because Chernobyl burns when you snort it. I guess that’s why it’s called Chernobyl. So, don’t think it’s like the coke we’ve just had. It burns when it goes down and it kicks like a mule. Enjoy.”

 

I allowed Kate and Andrea to take their turns first. I was not sure my nostril had recovered from its earlier suction failure but I was also keen to try this new variety of speed.  I’d had various types before but even the speed had always been diluted too and I’ve generally felt cheated. I hoped this Chernobyl lived up to Andrea’s advance billing. She would have made a great PR for the amphetamine industry.  I knew that I would probably have a most unpleasant time the next day, never sleeping and walking around like an unhappy zombie with that devastatingly enervated, spiritually depleted feeling, but I was beyond caring. I was fully aware of the difference between caution and recklessness and I was not prepared to act accordingly.

 

The moment of truth arrived. I bent over the plate with the straw cosily at home in my nostril, unused nostril firmly pinched shut and offered a prayer to the spirit of Dr. Hunter S Thompson. I snorted, gently and with a smoothly increasing sucking action. The nostril was operational again!  The speed burned all the way, a harsh, scouring sensation. A few snorts of this stuff and the inside of the nasal passage would be raw.  Imminent nosebleed. I clamped a finger to my active nostril and gasped. I sniffed even harder to promote quicker crystal absorption so that the burning sensation could fade with all due speed, pun intended. The burning sensation lasted for at least thirty seconds.

 

I looked over at Kate who was lying back on the couch, savouring this new flavour du jour. She sat upright and shook her head, hair flying around her face.

 

“Bracing.” she said.

 

“Speedy Gonsalez!” I said. “A presumptuous bouquet and a well-rounded palate.”

 

“My darling, you are so witty,” Andrea said.

 

“He’s not witty,” Kate said. “He thinks he’s a wise guy, he’s just a white guy.”

 

Each of us wanted a fresh drink. Even Andrea now asked for a glass of Chardonnay. In fact, she asked me to get her a tall glass from the kitchen because, as she explained with a grin of serious intent, she was way behind us and was determined to catch up quickly. Once she had her wine Andrea did indeed proceed to drink as much as fast as possible.  She admirably declined Kate’s offer of a cigarette.  

 

“What do you do for a living, my darling?” Andrea asked me. “You’ve got such a way with words, you must be a writer. Are you a journalist or are you that most depraved and desperate of creatures, a junior copywriter?”

 

“Andrea, have you seen the latest Home & Leisure? There’s an ad in there I want to show you. That agency has ripped off an idea I had years ago. Do you have a copy here?” Kate asked, running an effective interference on my behalf. She knew how much I hated being questioned on what I did as a day job. Conversation by interrogation must be the lowest form of social intercourse, beating even intense discussions about the weather. I prayed yet again for grateful blessings to be bestowed on Kate as a reward for being such a good friend.

 

“No, I haven’t got a copy here, probably at work,” Andrea replied. “Let me show you something, Kate. Our biggest campaign ever, the most exciting new liquor launch to hit South Africa yet. Kate, we’re going to wipe Absolut off the map! Big time! Absolutely!”

 

Andrea jumped up but Kate grabbed her arm and kept her from rushing off to find whatever it was that she wanted to show us.

 

“No, please, not now, Andrea, no shoptalk,” Kate implored. “Relax, let’s exchange some juicy, bitchy gossip about the people we mutually dislike.”

 

Andrea wanted to take exception to Kate’s refusal to be subjected to her campaign literature but the suggestion of exchange of gossip mollified her and she sat down again and launched into a long, involved, and possibly not particularly factual, narrative concerning various acquaintances she and Kate had in common. Kate made regular interjections, added previously unpublished details where appropriate and every now and then related a sordid tale of her own. Most of the stories revolved around the perennial subject of who was sleeping with whom, or not, as the case may be, whose heart was broken and who was going around breaking hearts.  

 

Although Kate and Andrea were having a great time exchanging this essential information, I was less than fascinated by the topic. I did not know any of the people involved nor was I ever likely to meet any of them. The Chernobyl had been absorbed into my bloodstream and the speed voodoo was fully upon me. I was restless, edgy, found myself obsessively running my hand through the short hair above my right ear as if to smooth down unruly growth, which was ridiculous since the hair was so short it was more like scratching stubble. The scalp was itchy and prickly but scratching did not ease the sensation. All the old familiar speed trip symptoms. I was bored and restless and ready to go. Somewhere. 

 

I got up and wandered over to the bookshelves to find out what Andrea’s literary tastes were. There was a whole slew of self improvement books, books on finding and enhancing spirituality (Getting In Touch With The Well Adjusted Inner Adult), some books on Buddhism, lots of books on food, large format travel books, books on business management, a number of thick, trashy bodice rippers, one whole shelf of classics in a standard paperback edition, assorted hardcover novels, all by female authors, and a fair selection of science fiction of the alternative mythic world sub-genre.

 

I guessed that the books on Buddhism either belonged to Thomas or were there because of his influence. Andrea was obviously keen on becoming a more spiritual person and on improving her self esteem but it seemed to me that she had so many varying books from authors who suggested so many widely differentiated paths to self-healing that Andrea could well become utterly confused and lost somewhere on this journey to herself. Maybe there is an author out there who will one day find the common denominator in all the different approaches and write the book where he provides the perfectly unified holistic approach, the one step method for learning to love the self. He or she will surely clean up.  On the other hand, since that book will put all other existing or potential gurus out of business, it will almost certainly never be allowed into print. Publishers may be white but they ain’t stupid.     

 

When I turned back to the conversation, Andrea was once again airing the subject of her relationship with Thomas. It seemed to me that this situation was much more troubled than it was healthy.

 

“I catch him looking at me sometimes, Kate,” Andrea moaned. “I can see from that look in his eyes he’s thinking, ‘how long is this woman going to keep her looks, she already wears too much make-up, soon she’ll be forty and I’ll only be twenty five, people will think I’m hanging out with my mother.’ Tell me Kate, my darling, honestly, do I look old?  My body is still good, isn’t it? My boobs are still good. I’m in good shape.” 

 

Andrea sat upright on the couch, straightened her back, raised her chin and pushed her chest out, arms flung wide in a model pose straight out of a 1940’s edition of Vogue.  Kate studied Andrea for a while, possibly not only to establish whether or nor Andrea could pass for younger than she was but more likely calculating how honest she could afford to be.

 

“You look pretty good, Andrea,” Kate said at last. “You’re an attractive, sophisticated woman. I’m sure Thomas doesn’t think you look like his mother or that other people will think you’re his mother.”

 

“My body is ageing and I hate it,” Andrea wailed. “Cellulite, sagging boobs, loose, wrinkly skin. I can feel these horrors creeping up on me. I spend hours in the gym  and I try to live a healthy life style but I just know I’m getting older and uglier.”

 

“I’m getting older too,” Kate said in a valiant attempt at solidarity with Andrea’s emotional crisis.

 

“Kate, honestly, my darling, it’s different for you, I’m telling you, you don’t have a twenty four year old boyfriend. You’ve looked the same for years anyway, if you’ll excuse me for saying this, but you’ve never been saddled with the burden of beauty, it‘s never been your image to be a glamour doll. You’re lucky, you know, you’ve never been the beauty queen type, your beauty lies in the way your personality makes you attractive, if you don’t mind me saying this, where I’ve always tried to be a glamour girl, you know how I am. I was born to be a kugel. Now I’m a victim of my own high standards of physical appearance and I hate to feel that I’m getting to be an old frump with lines on her face, cellulite, a big bum and droopy boobs.”

 

Andrea jumped up and pulled her loose top over her head and displayed more of her serious, apparently full-body, tan. She had no conspicuous body fat, the torso and arms showed good muscle tone. Her breasts were, if I were any judge of these matters, of an average size and looked firm and perky enough.  Andrea had almost certainly never breast fed any baby.

 

“How are my boobs?” Andrea asked, lifting her arms to accentuate the jut and lift of her breasts. “Are these the breasts of an old woman? Do I have to stand back for any twenty year old?”

 

“Those are good tits, Andrea,” Kate said. “Damn fine tits. I would be proud to have them. You’ve got nothing to fear from any competition. You’re a mature, sophisticated woman of the world with a good income and great tits. Now sit down and relax.”

 

“You are too kind, my darling, too terribly kind, even if you are just humouring me. What are your boobs like, Kate? Shall we compare? Go on, I showed you mine, now it’s your turn. We are all friends together, getting high, let’s get a little outrageous.”

 

“This isn’t show and tell time, Andrea,” Kate said. “I will display my tits at the appropriate time and place and this is not it. I appreciate your honesty with your body and respect your willingness to share your insecurity with us. Don't expect me to do the same. I’m perfectly happy with my tits.”

 

I wondered whether Andrea was going to share her incipient cellulite and big bum with us. No, she was not. She put on her shirt, sat down on the couch and pulled her knees up to her chest and rested her chin on them.

 

“I’m just an old fool facing my fortieth birthday with dread,” Andrea sighed. “I swear, I’ll get a facelift, a boob job, a tummy tuck and liposuction.” 

 

“Life begins at forty,” Kate said soothingly.

 

“There’s a school of thought that holds that life begins at conception,” I said. “Others say life begins at birth. The pro-lifers versus the pro-choice lobby.”

   

“Oh, shut up already!” Kate said. “When’s your birthday, Andrea?”

 

“Much too soon, much too soon. I’m having a major bash, sweetie, a serious celebration. I’ll fax you an invitation. I’m telling you, Kate, it’s going to be a definite rave and don’t behave type thing, it had better be, all the money I’m spending on it. A party is successful only if there is at least one hysterical fight and at least one seduction of a previously faithful partner. Drunkenness, mayhem, good drugs, good music, dancing until dawn, all of that. I want both of you to be there.”

 

“I’ll be there,” Kate promised.

 

“I can’t promise anything,” I said.

 

“My darling, don’t you dare say no!  I’ve confessed my shameful insecurities to you and exposed my boobs and that means we’ve sealed a bond, a sacred pact. If you don’t come to my party I’ll never forgive you and Kate’ll confirm this, I bear a long and good grudge. When least expected. I’ll pop up and stab you in the back.”     

 

Andrea jumped to her feet to make her point, standing over me and waving her finger in my face. Her expression was a weird amalgam of playful and vindictive and I suddenly feared that she was not referring to a metaphorical backstabbing at all. It could have been all that speed in her system or it could have been her natural reaction to people who said ‘no’ to her, or a highly combustible mixture of the two.  For a long moment the beautiful facade cracked and the lines of age showed, not the real wrinkles of old age, just the lines of insecurity and  desperate self-assertion, the likeness of a small scared little girl beneath the normally superimposed face of an ostensibly mature, successful businesswoman, then the cracks closed and Andrea smiled and was once again the beautiful, tanned, society girl with a good job, a large house in a good area and a twenty four year old male model boyfriend. Maybe it was the volatile blend of coke and speed in my bloodstream that was making me see schizophrenic visions.

 

“As a special favour to me, my darling? huh?” Andrea pleaded, “come to my party and make me happy.”  

 

“Go on, say yes,“ Kate urged me. “It’ll be a good party, you’ll meet the most amazingly beautiful women, the food and drink will be great, I know Andrea’s parties.  You can be my date for the evening. Andre won’t go, he doesn’t like that crowd of people. Too many trendy yuppies and women he can’t impress.”

 

What could I say?

 

“Allrighty then,” I grumbled. “I’ll go to this party.”

 

“Wonderful, fabulous!” Andrea gushed. “You know something, my darling? If I wasn’t already so fucking passionately in love with Thomas, I’d go for you big time. You play quiet and mysterious, standoffish, disinterested, bored, but I can tell there’s a raging beast underneath that studiedly cool exterior, that’s what I like.  A challenge.  Kate, I don’t know if I’m scratching on your patch but I bet if I tried I could really make him scream with passion.”

 

“You already make me squirm,” I said.

 

“You see? That’s what I mean. You’re just so fucking flippant, pretending to be so cool and unaffected but I bet you’re actually quite flattered by my offer and you’re probably wondering whether or not I am making a pass at you. You’re thinking, this woman is drunk and high, her boyfriend is away and will never know, let’s see if she is willing to put my manhood where her mouth is, don’t you, my darling? Aren’t you just a fraction turned on, my darling? How often is it that a woman propositions you?”      

 

“This is his second proposition of the night,” Kate chortled. “His planets must be converging in Venus. How can one man be so fortunate?”

 

“Remember rule number one?” I asked.

 

“Nothing to worry about,” Kate replied, “Andrea’s a perfectly normal, hot blooded, passionate woman who loves a challenge.  Shall I wait while you two slip off to the bedroom or would you prefer staying over?”

 

“Sweetie, are you encouraging me in my folly?” Andrea asked. “I was only joking, my dear. You know I don’t usually behave like this. You know me, Kate, inside the bitch armour I’m a shy kind of person. It must be all this Chernobyl and Chardonnay.  I shouldn’t drink, it makes me forget myself and I go into slut mode. Does anybody want another line?”

 

“What’s the time?”

 

“Half past two,” I said.

 

“We’re definitely never going to have any sleep tonight,” Kate said, “if we have more speed.”

 

“We won’t sleep anyway,” I said. “More speed will make no difference, we’ll just be extra wasted tomorrow  …  later today.”

 

“Let’s do some more,” Andrea said. “A little ain’t enough.”

 

Kate did not disagree with this conventional drug-taking wisdom. She and Andrea emptied their glasses and I refilled them. Kate lit a cigarette and offered one to Andrea who remained steadfast in her refusal.  I took a substantial swallow of my whiskey. The first one had been rather weak but as the night progressed the ratio of water to whiskey had steadily decreased. One of the benefits of the intake of stimulating chemicals was that one hardly realised how drunken one was getting. Terrible combination, really, upper and downer, the junkie’s general self-defeating behaviour.

 

Andrea opened some more of the little capsules and started chopping crystals. Soon we inhaled the last of the Chernobyl. By now I was really wired, whiskey notwithstanding, and I guessed the two women were feeling the same way. My scalp was itching terribly, I had a nervous twitch, and compulsively rubbed the sides of my nose, all three of us had compulsive sniffs. Our physical gestures were jerky. I poured drinks for everybody and we settled down on our respective couches for a few minutes of silent contemplation. 

 

I wondered how serious Andrea’s offer was and whether I was high enough to call her bluff, if bluff it was. I also silently debated, in case it was a valid offer, whether I should settle for a quickie or go for staying the night. The prospect of Kate’s presence in the lounge while I was having sex with Andrea in the bedroom was somehow very exciting. I also briefly considered the possibility of asking Kate if she wanted to watch, maybe join in a threesome, but I wasn’t sure that even a seriously out of it Kate would appreciate sex as a spectator sport or that she would be keen on joining us. With a lurching grasp at reality I warned myself that I was considering these options only because I was totally strung out and that my perception of the possibilities of this situation could be embarrassingly different to the reality. A horny man who is also wasted is not a rational being. He would rather rationalise his way towards a stupid solution and settle for the working hypothesis that the outrageous odds of a jest being a come-on is no more than the challenge a man must face and ignore in order to be a man, especially if there is nooky at the end of this particular tunnel.

 

I was not too far gone to calculate that Andrea’s offer was an extremely short term thing; she would be horrified to wake up next to me in the morning, if we ever did go to sleep, and our parting would be deeply embarrassing for both of us. The quickie while Kate waited was going to have to be the people’s choice if I intended taking advantage of Andrea.  As a matter of principle I had never been in favour of one-night stands or sex on first dates. This was a highly theoretical approach because I’d never had the opportunity for a one-night stand but it was a firm principle nonetheless.  On this occasion the admixture of alcohol and illicit chemicals conspired to make me disinclined to heed my principle. I was much more keen to get it on with Andrea than I had been with Michelle. Maybe it was because there was more of a dissolute, debauched air about Andrea, the promise that sex with her would actually be worth the effort.

 

 Michelle was superficially pretty sexy but she came across as the kind of woman who was going to be more interested in her own gratification than in mutual pleasure. She would be perfectly willing to be fucked as long as the pleasure was all hers and she did not have to exert herself too much in return, the kind of girl who would gratuitously tell you up front that she does not do blow jobs, the kind of woman whose price for sex is that her sole effort will be to exhort the man to work harder on making her come; she’ll moan like crazy as if his good time is purely dependent on the amount and level of noise she creates, and she’ll wrap her arms and legs around him and wiggle her fanny to facilitate deeper penetration but will not caress him, apart from possibly scratching his back, or kiss any part of his body except for the lips. The man’s reward will be that he is allowed to come in her but he is going to have to achieve that almost by himself. This is also the woman who complains that men only want one thing from her and that they utterly disregard the existence of her brain and refuse to accept that she has intelligence and acumen. Her ill-considered revenge for being thought of as nothing but a bimbo is to be a living plastic sex doll in bed except that sex dolls aren’t interested in their own sexual gratification. 

 

My feeling was that Andrea would be an active partner in the process, one would actually experience something akin to lovemaking even if it was mostly a matter of acquired sexual technique. Andrea would take as much pleasure from pleasing her sexual partner as she would from being pleased by him. I guess it comes from being older and more adept and from understanding that good sex includes fucking but that merely fucking is not always good sex.

 

“Penny for your thoughts?”

 

“Huh?” I mumbled. I was so deep into my psychosexual reverie my consciousness had temporarily absconded from the room.

 

“Where was your mind, my darling,” Andrea asked, with a wave of the hand towards the ceiling. “Kate and I were watching you just now and you were not on this earth anymore.”

 

“Are you as high as an elephant’s eye?” Kate asked. “I’m feeling pretty wrecked, ragged and rattled. This Chernobyl is no joke.”

 

“I was pondering the imponderables of life,” I said. “How high is the moon and what is she on.”

 

“Do you ever give a serious answer?” Andrea asked. “Kate, where did you get this boy from?  He must be hell to have around when a person is not in a mood for facetious arseholes.”

 

“He’s been pretty tame tonight,” Kate said. “Almost subdued.”

 

“I’m cowed by your natural beauty and raw sexuality, Andrea,” I explained. “It’s shyness, really.”

 

“Yeah, right,” Andrea said.

 

“Truly,“ I said. “I’m so shy I would not even think you were making a pass at me just now.  I’m so terribly shy, I would not go for it if you were making a pass.  I must add that I am also terribly honest.”

 

“You’re mocking me, you bastard,” Andrea fumed. “Kate, he is mocking me, isn’t he?”

 

“No, actually, I think not,” Kate said.

 

“I’m not mocking you,” I said piously. “It’s the drugs, they’re like a truth serum. I want to share my innermost secret longings, not to mention my impure thoughts about you.  There is lust in my heart.”

 

“Lust?” Andrea echoed.

 

“I want to fuck your brains out,” I tersely explained. “I think it’s just the drugs talking.”

 

“Maybe it’s the lust talking,” Kate retorted. “Let your conscience be your guide. Andrea, I’m afraid it looks like your challenge is about to be taken up. Are you going to back down big time or is it double or quits?”

 

“Double or quits?” Andrea asked. “Double or quits what, sweetie?”

 

“Double your fun. Do you think I should be left out in the proverbial cold?” Kate softly asked. “I’ve also had an earlier proposition that I turned down as well.  I’m feeling more raunchy and frisky now. I can’t see why the three of us can’t share a jolly sexy romp.  I’m not shy, I know you’re not shy, he’s just putting you on about being shy.  Let’s all get naked and really get to know each other. This is a perfect moment, an auspicious moment, let’s allow the drugs to work for us.”

 

“This is so sudden,“ I murmured.

 

“Do you want to see my tits now, Andrea?” Kate asked.

 

Andrea hid her thoughts behind her tall glass from which she sipped  contemplatively. She gave Kate and me a careful, calculating once over. It could have been rigid fear.

 

“I must have a tequila, my darlings,” she finally said. “I’m afraid I must get really wrecked before I can make this decision.  Let’s go have tequilas at this gay bar in Sea Point, Unforgettable. Have you been there?”

 

Neither Kate nor I had heard of it.

 

“I go there a lot,” Andrea said. “Nicky the manager is a great buddy of mine. He does the most divine cocktails too but tonight I want to get shitfaced on tequila.”

 

“What’s the crisis, sweetie?” Kate asked. “I’m not asking you to do anything you haven’t done before.”

 

“Lately that’s not me anymore, my darling, truly, it’s nothing personal or anything, Kate, I’m not ready for your proposition right now.”

 

“Andrea and I used to be lovers once, long ago in Jo’burg,” Kate told me. “I was there for a job, lived in Hillbrow for about two months before it got so dangerous. Back then it was just deliciously sleazy.  Andrea is originally from Kempton Park, isn’t it?”

 

“By the airport,” Andrea confirmed. “That’s a different lifetime ago, my darling, in a galaxy far, far away.  Who was that guy again, you were with at that party where we met? That guy with the fixation?”

 

“That was that gay boy I was seeing at the time, you know, Roger, the boy who did the sound for the Black Sun?  I’m embarrassed to this day by my presumption. My mission in life then was to convert this boy to heterosexuality. He was so beautiful I couldn’t stand to let him go to waste for womankind. I was very young then, utterly naive and foolish. I couldn’t believe any man could resist me if I really tried. I thought Roger would see the light if only he had a good woman and a good screw.”

 

“What happened to him?” Andrea asked. “Did you fuck him?”

 

“No, of course not,” Kate scoffed. “It was just my naive optimism. That boy was so gay I could grind my musky crotch in his face and he wouldn’t get an erection, believe me, I tried. I took Roger everywhere, threw all my sex appeal at him, tried my best to get him drunk enough to get him to fuck me but even when he was so drunk he saw double he still resisted my best efforts to seduce him. Many a night we shared a bed naked but strictly platonic, just the odd attempt at lustful fondling from my side but apart from hugs Roger never responded favourably. He didn’t mind hugging.  Anyway, at that party where Andrea and I met, I got so fed up with Roger for flirting with some TV actor, I got pretty drunk and got into this deep conversation with Andrea who turned out to be in her man-hating phase just then. We really bonded because both of us had the same kind of terrible experiences with men, mostly due to our own stupidity as we eventually discovered when we got wise, and I abandoned Roger to his TV actor and went home with Andrea. I don’t know who seduced whom. The next morning when we woke up it was like ‘woooaagh! who did I get into last night!’ But we managed to weather the initial awkwardness and we were lovers for the rest of my stay in Jo’burg.  We were utterly in lust. The torrid twins we were.”

 

“So sad it had to end,” I said.

 

“I was twenty two,” Kate said. “It was a phase I was going through and anyway I came back to Cape Town after two months and I met a guy here, another tragic story actually, and absence from Andrea made the heart go wander. All I’m trying to get at, is to illustrate that Andrea and I shouldn’t be too shy with each other. We go way back.  It was a long time ago but it did happen and I still have fond memories of that time.”

 

“We did have a wonderful time, my darling” Andrea conceded. “But it is almost a different lifetime ago for me and I must have tequila before I can consider walking down that road again.”

 

Andrea insisted on driving us in her pitch-black BMW convertible and we had a smooth ride to Sea Point soothed by the mellifluous sounds of Grover Washington Jnr.  

 

Unforgettable was in a narrow one way side street between Main Road and Beach Road in central Sea Point.  Andrea had to park a fair distance away in Main Road. We walked past two tall promenading prostitutes with big hair and small skirts, possibly transvestites, some street children sleeping in a doorway and a motley assortment of Sea Point’s current multi-ethnic population strolling up and down the grimy Main Road pavement, low rent boulevardiers who had no homes to go to, before we turned into the side street and came to Unforgettable’s street level entrance, a plain wooden door in an otherwise blank, terra cotta facade.  The name of the bar was embossed on a discrete metal plaque above the door. A bulky individual in an ill-fitting tuxedo and with a scraggly blond ponytail stood guard. His coarse features looked Slavic.

 

“Hi, Alex” Andrea chirped. “How are you? Still open?”

 

“Howzit,” Alex grunted as he opened the door for us. “Still open. Late night?”

 

Andrea did not respond to this obviously rhetoric question and pulled Kate and I inside in her wake. The interior was designed to resemble an old fashioned American saloon bar with lots of dark wood, highly polished brass and chrome metal fittings and plush leather. The polished wooden bar counter was a hollow rectangle with rounded edges in the centre of the room. Against the one side wall of the room there was a row of booths and against the other wall on the opposite side of the bar there was a row of banquettes. The lighting was subdued and the soundtrack as we entered was mid-Fifties Billie Holiday.  Even at this early morning hour the room was quite full, almost all the booths and banquettes were taken. Mostly young, stylish males, a smattering of females. 

 

“Let’s sit at the bar,” Andrea suggested.

 

The barman was a tall, thin blond boy, and I do not refer to him as a boy to be patronising; he looked very young, below the legal age to be in a bar. He was very good-looking with high cheekbones, clear blue eyes and a floppy fringe he continuously flicked out of his face. He was dressed in white shirt and black waistcoat and I would not have been surprised to see a watch chain curving over his flat belly. The owners had made an effort consistently to carry through the traditional saloon bar theme.  I wondered if they served club sandwiches and good chilli, and if it was a shot-and-beer kind of crowd. The clientele did not much resemble working men, not blue collar workers anyway.

 

Kate lit a cigarette and surveyed the room, I surveyed the liquor collection behind the bar and Andrea ordered a round of tequilas from Raoul the barman. He told her that Nicky was off duty, a fact Andrea noted with no apparent regret.

 

We went through the ritualistic rigmarole of tequila drinking. Andrea immediately ordered another round. Kate and I looked at each other. We had been drinking steadily for most of the night and there was no way of telling whether the speed had won out over the alcohol. That is, we did not know how drunk we really were because speed tends to put back that edge alcohol dulls and it makes a person believe he or she is more capable of rational, controlled action than he or she actually is. We had come down here so that Andrea could get some Dutch courage and I did not want to end up on a situation where she was so drunk she fell over.

 

“Steady on, Andrea,” Kate warned. “Slow and easy, sweetie. You know how lethal tequila is and how it sneaks up on you.”

 

“Fuck that,“ Andrea said. “Don’t you tell me what and how to drink, my darling. Look at yourself, Kate, look at how much you drink, so don’t give me shit about what I drink. I told you I want to get shitfaced.”

 

We shrugged and disposed of the second round of tequilas. Andrea ordered another round. I am not a great fan of tequila, so I asked for a Jim Beam on the rocks instead. There was no need to stick to mid-price scotch because Andrea was paying for our drinks. The two women did their tequilas while I slowly sipped my bourbon. They chattered away to each other and Raoul and I could soon tell from the somewhat stupid turn the conversation was taking, the slurred speech and inappropriately raucous laughter, that my two companions were deep, as the old expression has it, in their cups and sinking fast.  I sighed and gave Raoul the thrill of seeing me rolling my eyeballs. 

 

Kate slid off her barstool and announced that she was going to the Ladies if indeed Unforgettable had a “Ladies.” Andrea quipped that there was a “Rough Trade” and a “Drama Queen” and said that she needed to powder her nose also. There was a combined titter at this in-joke before they tottered off arm in arm, chuckling maniacally all the way.  It seemed that I would not be invited along on this venture.  Raoul and I shared an empathetic moment. I guessed he was silent witness to a great deal of exasperation with foolishly and obstreperously drunk drinking companions.

 

“I wouldn’t let one of them try to drive me home, if I were you,” Raoul remarked.

 

“What can I do? It so happens that we came in Andrea’s car. I’m always nervous about driving someone else’s car and anyway I’m not one hundred percent sober either.”

 

“I’ll give you a lift home,” a previously unknown voice offered.

 

I turned around and saw a tall dark stranger in a navy blue double-breasted power suit, sparkling white shirt and a yellow tie with dark polka dots. I did not look down to check out his shoes but I suspected they were likely to be genuine Crockett & Jones brogues. He held out his hand and smiled the kind of broad. white toothed smile I generally associate with absolute insincerity, the kind of smile often contemporaneous with the voluble and glib assurance that the smiler was being perfectly frank and honest.  Soon after the smile and the assurance the pitch starts, the one where the pitchman not only tries to sell you a product or service you had not previously wanted but then does his best to convince you that he is in truth doing you a favour and that it would be an act of abhorrent, selfish ungratefulness for you to say no to his sales talk. My bullshit detector went onto red alert.

 

“Louis van der Merwe,” the stranger said in a cultured accent that betrayed no ethnic origins. It was a well-modulated voice, a voice accustomed to public speaking, a voice accustomed to attracting and retaining attention and a voice well versed in the art of persuasion.

 

“Hi,” I said with the least amount of enthusiasm I could muster.

 

“Can I buy you a drink?” Van der Merwe asked, for the moment ignoring my lack of enthusiasm. This was simply the banal introductory formality before he started rolling out the pitch. 

 

“Thanks for the offer,” I said, “but I’m all right for the moment, thank you.”

 

“I haven’t seen you here before.” Van der Merwe said.   

 

“That’s surprising. I haven’t been here before.”

 

“I sense some hostility,” Van der Merwe perceptively remarked. “Please relax, I’m not going to try to sell you anything or ask you whether you’ve been saved. You look like an interesting person, I thought I’d come and have a chat to you since you’re a new face here. Raoul, an Evian for me and refill this gentleman’s glass with whatever he’s drinking.”

 

Raoul looked at me for confirmation. I appreciated his courtesy but decided that if this dude wanted to buy me a drink I wasn’t going to put up too much of a stiff resistance. I would politely and firmly shrug him off once Andrea and Kate returned.  Raoul correctly interpreted my glance and poured me another Jim Beam on the rocks and gave Van der Merwe his water.

 

“So, what do you do?” Van der Merwe asked. He ran his finger around the edge of his glass while giving me the benefit of his best honest Joe direct eye contact. 

 

I gave him a look of disbelief. He picked me out because I’m a new face and looks like an interesting guy and all he could think of as a conversation opener was to enquire after my professional status? If this was an attempted pick-up, he was not banking on marketing himself as an interesting person in return.

 

“I’m a barfly,” I said.

 

“Is it a touchy subject?” Van der Merwe asked with a hint of sympathy in his voice.

 

“Being a barfly? Not really. I have great perks. Falling over gets me accepted. It means never having to say you’re a sorry asshole ...”

 

“Okay, okay, I get the message,” Van der Merwe interrupted me, “we won’t pursue your career choice, it was just an ice breaker.”

 

“No shit.”

 

“Please, no hostility. You’re too good-looking and sensitive a man to allow yourself to wallow in such an awful emotion.  Be more positive towards new people you meet and you’ll find you’ll meet some amazing people. Positivity. Allow yourself to be open to new experiences.”

 

“This experience hasn’t been all that new up to now.”

 

“Maybe so, I’m a new person to you though. We’ve never met before and somehow fate, call it what you will, brought you in here tonight ...”

 

“Andrea brought me in here tonight.”

 

“... and we might put together a solid new friendship for life.”

 

“I beg your pardon?”

 

“A few minutes ago neither of us knew the other but now the way is open for us to build up a solid long-term interpersonal relationship if we’re willing to suspend our judgements for a while and just give the other person space to express himself.”

 

“There’s one thing I should express to you,” I said, “and I hope this doesn’t make you drop your paddle out of the canoe.  I’m not gay and I’m not actually looking for a gay adventure either.”

 

“I know you’re straight,” Van der Merwe solemnly assured me. “Excuse me for saying this, it stands out a mile. Lots of men aren’t fully gay, not overtly, but that’s what they’re missing in their lives, the sexual bond with another man, sometimes they don’t even know it unless someone points it out to them. Nothing to be ashamed or scared of, to have sex with a man, it’s a natural bonding thing for people of the same sex.   Your two friends, the girls, they know that, I could see that from my corner, how hot they were for each other. They’re probably having it off in the toilets even as we speak.”

 

It had not occurred to me before but Van der Merwe may have been right about Andrea and Kate. They’d been away for longer than was strictly necessary for a call of nature. Andrea’s three tequilas could have been just what she’d needed to put her into the mood for fooling around with Kate in the privacy of the toilets. After all, if they had once been lovers it was not difficult to believe that not much would be required in the nature of persuasion once the topic was on the table. Kate was gung ho about these things and would utilise the opportunity if it arose since she was the one who had raised the issue in the first place. I had somehow expected to be part of the process though. I guessed that it had been a fatuous hope, the girls might be keen to get it on but not necessarily with me as either active partner or as spectator.

 

“Are you in fact, actually, as we speak, trying to hand me a line?” I asked.

 

“I like your forthrightness. My instincts were spot on. Okay, I admit it, I am trying to pick you up. That you are still talking to me suggests to me that you’re at least interested and that it’s likely you’re persuadable. That’s half the battle. So many straight men get so hostile and defensive when they encounter gay men, they sweat, swear, get violent, as if any of that is necessary. The ones who are most defensive are the ones who have the gravest doubts about their own sexuality.”

 

“In a minute you’re going to tell me that we are all gay and don’t know it.”

 

“Will it help?”

 

“No.”

 

“Okay, I won’t. Have you ever kissed a man?”

 

“Not since my father when I was little.”

 

“Deep tongue.”

 

“My father didn’t do tongue.”

 

“You facetious cunt. Have you ever had sex with a man, either as active or as passive participant?”

 

“Are you doing a survey? Will I win a free pen if I answer all your questions openly and honestly and without fear of recrimination?”

 

“You are a facetious cunt.  You are hiding behind your facetiousness, you know, it’s no secret, you’re embarrassed to tell me in case you have to reveal that side of you that you’ve probably been hiding for years, keeping it secret so nobody would know the real you, hiding it from yourself. You shy away from sexual subjects, don’t you, you don’t know what your own sexuality is. Denial, nothing but fearful denial.  When is the last time you’ve had sex? And with whom?”

 

“Are you’re here to relieve me from my sexual drought?”

 

“If you want to. I believe you really want to, you can’t allow yourself to say it, because you’re denying it, you’re essentially passive, the other person must make the first move. Okay, fine, I’ll make the first move. Leave the girls here, come home with me. I’ll take you home tomorrow morning.”

 

“Later today?”

 

“Later today. I know you want to, your eyes betray you, always. You find my proposal titillating, I know you’re ready for this. I’ll bet you’re aching for good sex.”

 

“Look here,” I said, “I hate to bust your bubble but I’ll take a rain check on this one. You okay with that?  I guess you’re some hot psycho-analyst who thinks he’s got my number and for all I know you may be one hundred percent accurate in your assessment of my sexuality and my desperate need for sex and I’ll give you full marks for effort, but no thanks, not tonight.  Don’t bother suggesting we exchange phone numbers. Thanks for the drink and good night.”

 

I turned my back on Van der Merwe and for a few moments I was acutely aware of his angry breathing before he walked away.  I caught Raoul’s impassive eye.

 

“Must be my lucky night,” I said. “I didn’t know it’s so visible I’m sex starved.”

 

“I should be so lucky,” Raoul said. 

 

“Did I turn down a hot ticket?”

 

“I’m not saying a thing. I only work here.”

 

“Oh, come on, tell me. He must be a regular.”

 

“Regular customer, yes, in other respects I’m not so sure. Big bucks, big dick, his farts don’t stink.”

 

“What’s he do?”

 

“Clinical psychologist.”   

 

“No wonder he summed me up so accurately.”

 

“Did he?”

 

Before I could reply Andrea and Kate made a boisterous return to centre stage. They were still radiant with drunken bonhomie but they appeared neither flushed nor displayed any other outward signs of recent sexual indulgence.

 

“That took a long time,” I complained. “I was beginning to wonder if you were holding out on me, actually powdering your noses, if you know what I mean, and not letting me in on it.”

 

“Oh fuck off,” Andrea said. “Raoul, tequilas for two!”

 

“We ran into some mutual acquaintances in the loo,” Kate explained. “We got to chatting, you know how it is when we have to catch up on who’s doing it to whom with what.  Shame on you for suspecting we wouldn’t share a substance with you if we had any. You know I’d never do that. We did ask on the off chance but they didn’t have any either. The people here are so boring, they’re beyond drugs, this is natural high country.”

 

“You’re obsessed with drugs,” Andrea complained. “Let’s have a tequila and get as shitfaced as possible before we go home to frolic menage a trois-ly. One more drink, we can go.”

 

“Is that still a viable concept?” I asked.

 

“Very much,” Kate affirmed with a delighted grin. “Very much. I had a chat to Andrea in the loo and she is fully into it now. The powers of tequila as an aphrodisiac are not to be underrated. That and the anticipation of getting her hands on your body.”

 

“I was propositioned just now,” I said. “A guy came up to me and offered me a ride home. His home.”

 

“Nice going,” Kate said. “Fast worker ain’t you? I hope you said yes. Got his phone number for later?”

 

“And miss out on the threesome? Not likely.”

 

“Are you gay?” Andrea asked. “I mean, deep down, aren’t you really gay, you’re such a weird guy, seriously weird vibe, maybe you’re actually gay and won’t admit it.  Lots of men are in denial, it’s a well-known fact, you know, my darling, nothing to be ashamed of, is there, Kate?”

 

“You sound like this guy,” I said. “He also tried to seduce me by analysing me and  or my sexuality.”

 

“I am not trying to seduce you, my darling,” Andrea replied, “whatever you may think. I’m going through with this because of Kate and because I’m drunk and high and no longer care.”

 

“A true romantic,” I said. “Let’s forget about the spiritual thing and the emotional entanglements and concentrate on the physical act. Let’s get lost in lust.” 

 

“Hear, hear,” Kate said.

 

“Fuck off,” Andrea said. “My darling.”

 

“Can we go now?” I asked.

 

Andrea and Kate finished their tequilas. We left in high spirits and although all three of us were unsteady on our feet Andrea was having the most difficulty co-ordinating her motor skills and needed to walk arm in arm with Kate for more than comradely solidarity. Her feet virtually dragged on the ground and her head lolled unstably on her slender neck.  At the BMW there was some debate on the issue of who should be in charge of the car on the drive home to Camps Bay.  Andrea kindly offered to do the honours and got rather stroppy about driving her own car, goddammit, but Kate firmly and quite correctly pointed out that Andrea was in no fit state to drive a hard bargain much less a German luxury sedan.  Kate herself was a veteran of countless drives home in the early hours of the morning at that level of intoxication where you are just alert enough to realise you have to drive so much more carefully than all the sober road users around you that you end up driving very slowly, straddling the white line for guidance and praying all the way that there are no roadblocks ahead.

 

Kate got behind the steering wheel and I put Andrea on the back seat where she slumped back against the leather upholstery with a dull look in her eyes and a droplet of drool at the corner of her slack mouth.  Kate set off at a sedate pace and drove well within the speed limit all the way.

 

“Are you all right?” Kate asked.

 

“I think so. You?”

 

“I’m fine. I’ve driven longer distances in a more fucked state. How’s Andrea doing in the back?”

 

I turned around to have a look at Andrea. It was my educated guess that she was no longer in a functionally operational mode.

 

“Her eyes are closed,” I said. “She might be meditating.”

 

“These Buddhists do it everywhere,” Kate said with a smile and gave me a wink.

 

We arrived at Andrea’s house without incident. By then Andrea was definitely fast asleep.  Kate and I gazed at her sleeping form and then eyed the stairs.

 

“Funny how much steeper the stairs suddenly look,” I said.  “This woman is slim but inert and I know from my Army days how terrible it is to carry dead weight.”

 

“No use pondering the issue,” Kate said.  “Let’s just get her up there.”

 

She grabbed hold of Andrea’s legs and I held Andrea under the armpits. I suppose our progress to the front door was less a matter of climbing than staggering up the stairs for we were none too sober either. Once or twice Andrea came close to permanent harm by almost being dropped by either Kate or me or by narrowly escaping having some sensitive part of her anatomy bumped against a sharp brick edge but thankfully we did get her into her house without undue injury. Inside the house there was another quick debate over Andrea’s destination: should we put her on a couch in the lounge in the hope that she might revive soon or should we take her directly to her bedroom? The democratic vote favoured the bedroom.  It appeared to be rather unlikely that Andrea would be alert, mobile and participative in the short term. 

 

Kate tucked Andrea into bed while I returned to the lounge to pour drinks.

 

“Dream baby is off on a nocturnal journey,” Kate said when she returned. “That girl has no tolerance for anything anymore. That’s what a clean living Buddhist lifestyle does for you.”

 

“Pity,” I said, “about the menage a trois.”

 

“Are you truly disappointed?  Really?  We still have each other, my dear.”

 

“That we do. Do you remember the night of the launch party at Duck Billings?”

 

“Oh yes, of course I do, yes.”

 

On a Friday evening in February about four years before, Kate had invited me along to the launch party of a small sound studio ran by friends of hers. It was a reciprocal invitation since I had originally asked her to be my guest on the same night at the house warming party of a mutual friend.  Kate suggested we attend both parties, the launch first, the housewarming after. 

 

The launch party had a tenuous Mexican theme. The caterer provided nachos, and tacos with various fillings on paper plates that quickly became too soggy to hold, and two young women in low cut body suits and tight jeans circulated amongst the guests with a bottle of tequila in a holster on one hip and a bottle of margarita mix in a holster on the other hip. The woman stood behind you so that your head could tilt back into her cleavage and she first poured a shot of tequila and then a shot of mix into your mouth and then vigorously shook your head to blend the ingredients.  I guessed it was so tacky it was cool.  

 

Kate and I got pretty plastered on beer, wine and margaritas and when it was time to depart for the housewarming I mentioned that I still had some coke left from a recent purchase. We immediately and democratically decided to go to my flat for a few lines of coke to put the edge back in our alcohol addled brains and to inspire us for the drive to the housewarming.  At my flat I hauled out a five-litre box of red wine left over from New Year’s while Kate chopped out the lines.  

 

In the end we never got to the housewarming. We did all the coke, drank a lot of red wine and saw the rising of the sun. To be precise, we suddenly became aware that daylight had sneaked up on us while we were deeply committed to our coke fuelled conversation. Our discussion rambled as tends to happen when cokeheads get intense, went off into weird tangents, we continuously interrupted ourselves and each other to add asides to whatever the one or the other was saying at the time, and we shared a lot of our hitherto securely cloistered secrets and anxieties.  I told Kate things about my life nobody but me, and the one or two other persons who were involved, knew.  Kate shared her childhood traumas, adult troubles and troubled sexual adventures with me.  It was, as Kate put it, a major bonding session, the kind of sharing coke encourages and assists when you are with a trusted person because the coke makes you want to yield up shameful secrets, be truthful, say things you might not otherwise express even if you were drunk.

 

We’d started off sitting around my dining room table where Kate chopped the coke on the glass of a framed portrait but after a while I got tired of the hard chair and sat down on the three seater couch and Invited Kate to join me. We sat there shoulder to shoulder until dawn, having this amazing exchange of confidentialities.

 

The continuity of my narrative, the essence of what I was trying to say and had to struggle to keep in focus throughout my loquacious wanderings in the maze of diversions and asides, was my attempt to carefully phrase and explain to Kate my emotional bond with her as I saw it.   I had this extraordinary feeling of warmth and love towards Kate and was highly conscious of her close proximity and of the possibility that I could easily reach out to embrace her, kiss her, that it would be the easiest thing in the world right there and then to reach for her to change our lives forever, as the cliché has it, whether for good or bad. All I had to do was to make that one move to show my desire, to cross the line between close but chaste friendship and close but no longer chaste friendship.

 

“That night was the closest I’ve ever come to making a pass at you,” I said.

 

“I remember that night. I knew the atmosphere was charged.”

 

“It just didn’t seem right. I was scared I’d ruin the friendship by pulling a move on you. Somehow alienating you didn’t seem worth the risk, the embarrassment if you said no.  I didn’t know how you’d react. Whether you’d still respect me the next morning if you’d said yes.”

 

“Truthfully, I’m not sure I would have said no. I would have given it serious consideration and under the circumstances I might have concluded that it would not be an embarrassment for us the next day if it were just one night of reckless, never-to-be-repeated, mutual passion.  Maybe it’s just as well you didn’t make a pass.”

 

Kate left just after daybreak on the Saturday morning and it was only while walking her to her car, after the long night’s convoluted, circumlocutious conversation, that I blurted out the confession I had been moving towards but had not managed to get to because of the constant interruptions in the flow of oratory.  While we shared a farewell bear hug I finally told Kate I loved her, that I had recognised and acknowledged it at last as a genuine emotion, and that I was happy just to say it, to declare a simple, unconditional, undemanding love. At that point I experienced a huge, overwhelming, heart warming, uplifting, all-encompassing love that was not merely sexual lust or a teenage crush or any other superficial emotional response. The coke and the wine must have had an influence on my need and willingness to say these things but at that moment I felt closer to Kate than I had ever felt to anyone else ever. In fact that was the first time I felt truly close to anyone at all. The best part was that I also knew that my feeling was independent of any amorous longing or affinity and that it was such a complete love that neither the presence nor the absence of a sexual relationship would have any effect on its strength or longevity.

 

It was an unconditional love I never expected to consummate. and this certainty bothered me not at all. I’d found a soul mate. 

 

“How do you feel about it now?” Kate asked.

 

“About what?”

 

“Making a pass. Now.”

 

“Aren’t we beyond that by now?  I thought we had an understanding on the subject. Our friendship is too strong for that kind of bullshit.”

 

“Don’t you wonder sometimes? Friendship between men and women is always informed by some degree of sexual attraction, that’s the factor that makes it interesting. I think we all secretly fancy having it off with our close chums of the opposite sex or the same sex for that matter.”

 

“I suppose so. On the other hand it’s probably better keeping that small amount of sexual tension intact, that electricity, otherwise the spark that fired up the friendship will fizzle out. Love affairs go sour too quickly, too unexpectedly and irredeemably, you know too much about your partner, you no longer wonder about them and you no longer have any tolerance. Preserve the mystery, preserve the friendship.”

 

“A simple ‘no’ would have sufficed.”

 

“Love without the bullshit. Yes, it means no, for now, not wanting to eliminate my options completely.”

 

“Later?”

 

“Later tonight or later this life? I don’t know what’s gonna happen in the future. I might have a sudden moment of unrestrained paranoid-schizophrenic lust and jump on you.”

 

“I would really like to do another line before we go,” Kate sighed. “But I guess we’ve had all the goodies in Andrea’s cupboard.”

 

“Never mind more drugs, the weather’s nice,“ I said. “Let’s go back to Muizenberg, to the beach, and stroll hand in hand on the sand and watch the sun come up. Let’s have a jolly old-fashioned romantic end to this night of debauchery. We’ll just lust in our minds and be content in our friendship.”

 

We got up and hugged each other tightly for a minute or two, not saying a word for once. It was a minute of rare happiness for me, pure exhilaration in the comfort of the certitude of simple happiness, and I did my telepathic best to project that happiness and the accompanying loving warmth to Kate as a mental thank you note for the love I believed I received from her and did not always feel worthy of.

 

“My dear friend,“ Kate said when we broke apart, “my dear, dear friend. Life is a funny old thing, isn’t it? The choices we make, the relationships we end up in.”

 

“I guess we’ve just shared a Kodak Moment,” I said.  “Let’s drive to Muizenberg under the spell of this sentimental glow.”

 

“Are you ever accidentally not sarcastic?”

 

“Not that I know of. The post-ironic world is not my home.”

 

“We are all strangers there. Okay, then, let’s journey back to the funky and hip Southern suburbs. We’ve had our fun, it’s time to run.”

 

“Will you drive?” I asked. “I’m tired and I’m wasted and I can’t find my way home.”

 

Finis

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

   

 

 

 

 

                  

 

 

 

 

 

    

 

 

    

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

     

 

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