To be continued...

I couldn’t help but feel a little sick when I woke up. I was fine when my eyes first opened but as they focused, so did the hangover and sketchy recollections.  The smell of under-age sex and cherry cigars hung in the air like a curtain attempting to hide the two men who sat in an odd position on the couch. One still gripping the gaming controller and the other…gripping something else. I had to kick and shuffle my way to the kitchen. Navigating the sea of passed-out bodies and empty bottles was more than my fragile state was willing to take on. I heard a few groans as toes connected with heads but the alcohol had made damn sure that no one was going to wake up any time soon. The sun was starting to heat the air encasing me and as a bead of sweat rolled past my eyebrow I caught a glimpse of something no one should ever have to see…

The most important meal of the Day

I couldn’t quite make out what she was complaining about. She complained all the time so each of the vocal daggers she aimed at me just melted down into a swirling pit of general disapproval. The ignorance of youth and the parent-told picket fences of what was to be my future had splintered and were now nothing more than annoyances and pending infections. I have given up on pretending to care. A nod and a grunt seemed enough to shut her up so that was how we communicated for the last few years. The bitch squealed and squawked in her banshee fashion and I grunted in her general direction to let her know that I was listening while muttering to myself about how little I cared to try to help with her latest saga. I reckoned her moods were a result of menopause and too many decades of reality tv shows and soap operas. I hope she never looks in the corner of the wardrobe…I’ll never hear the end of it. I cannot be blamed for seeking alternative entertainment. She hasn’t aged well and the aftermath of having 3 kids hung on her hips as if to taunt me. She was never my ideal woman but a few beers, a backseat and a positive pregnancy test sealed my fate tighter that the doors on a submarine. This was my existence. My prison.

I hauled my arse up off the couch and made my daily donation of dishes into the sink. If I was going to have to pay for a maid she may as well earn her keep. She was easy on the eyes which made the fact that she was utterly useless at house-keeping, a little easier to bear.

My family life was headed down faster than the beers I chugged down with Greg at the local watering hole. Misery loves company and I was fucking miserable.

I waved blankly at the kids that morning and gave my banshee a peck on the cheek to avoid her false concern about ‘how distant ‘I had become and how I needed to try harder for the sake of the children. Bullshit. The kids haven’t lifted their eyes from some screen of some sort since they were old enough to type ‘LOL’…I wasn’t going to hurt anyone’s feelings.

Rancid bitch.

I climbed into my suffocating corporate attire and headed toward the garage. There she was. My baby. The only thing I had to show for 30 long years of hard work, nappy-changing and keeping up with the Joneses. I put on some Black Sabbath and relaxed for a while, feeling the velvet-soft caress of the upholstery against the back of my neck. I opened the window just a bit. Just enough for the hose…

The Morning After

It was a typical Tuesday morning and I stumbled out of bed and promptly started nursing the latest hangover I had to add to the collection of blurry memories and headaches that I had been experiencing a lot lately. I didn’t know what I was running from or waiting for but at least the nausea and pain in where I think my liver once was let me know I was still alive. Great. I spent way too much money last night and the cigarette hanging out of the side of my mouth reminds me how much I must smell like the floor of a bar. Just another day in paradise.

I eventually found my sunglasses which had secured themselves to my coffee table with the cunning use of spilled beer and whiskey. I never could stop at one. I dragged my ass to the fridge seeking anything cold and sweet. Sadly, all the cola that I did have was in glasses scattered around the room and they were all mixed with some sort of booze or cigarette butts…not my idea of a wholesome breakfast. I headed out of my hole-in-the-wall motel and went to find somewhere to eat something.

I walked into a restaurant where the ting of the bell above the door woke the ‘chef’ and the waitress that were leaning on the wall between the kitchen and the fine dining area. I glanced up and caught a glimpse of him wiping the left-overs of a head cold off his moustache. He looked roughly as excited about life as I was. I found myself wondering about the people that came into this establishment and imagined that the beer must be great because no one in their right mind would come here for the food unless they were very brave, very stupid or very desperate. ‘Mary Lou’ grabbed a tattered menu and showed me to a booth by the window. ‘Lovely’, I thought to myself. ‘Now I can watch society’s reject bin roll by while I cut into my carefully-prepared nondescript lump of grease’.

  I was the only one there so I couldn’t imagine why she looked confused when scanning the tables to find somewhere to seat me. I ordered coffee…the only thing I thought may be cockroach-free. The scent of it coming out of the percolator was a welcome smell to mask the cold, stale stench of wood polish and broken dreams. ‘Mary Lou’ came back with my coffee. I think I was wrong about the cockroaches. She was clearly air-headed but while rambling off the specials of the day, she shot a look at my hands and blinked nervously. When I woke up I had been to hungover to notice the blood clumped beneath my finger nails…´I guess that explains the body in the bathroom’, I thought to myself. I really should lay off the booze…

Reign on my Parade

I couldn’t help but notice the scars on her face as she walked in. Such a pretty, young thing. The wind outside had not been kind to her hair and as she lifted a hand to brush a few strands away from her eyelashes she stalled halfway through the action.

So young, so much potential and so shy. The scars beneath her left eye refused to be hidden behind the thin veil of honey blonde she so desperately hoped would hide them. ‘Ouch’, I thought, ‘That must have hurt’. I peered at her over the rim of my coffee mug. It tasted like shit but on a day like this, any warmth was good warmth.

The wind howled.

The scars were pretty bad so I can understand why she keeps either her hair or her hand in front of her face. I’m by no means a voyeur but there is something so captivating about the deep, red marks on her otherwise porcelain skin. Like a broken doll. Shattered perfection. She sits down surrounded by what looks to be family and friends. Another joins the table and I see that familiar brush of hair in front of her face. She’ll never regain the confidence she once had.

Prom Queen.

I see the shifting eyes of her party. They want to stare without staring. They feel uncomfortable looking at her but they smile and pretend they don’t notice a thing. I brush my fingers against my pock-marked cheek, avert my gaze and catch the eye of the waiter. That wobbling lump of gelatine cleverly disguised as cheese cake has not gone down well, my coffee has seen its last and it’s high time for me to leave. Important things to do

 I know how she got those scars. Neither she nor her shifty-eyed family will ever know. She went out with a friend. Had a few drinks. She made the mistake of ‘getting friendly’ with the wrong man. I wonder if she’ll recognize me.

Brothers in Harm

Written for SA Music News August 2011 

I can’t speak for the rest of the world but I do know that in South Africa the metal community (or most of them at least) likes to think of themselves as a family. You will always see people greet each other with a smile and a ‘Hey my metal brother / metal sister’ particularly on a certain social networking site. This sense of camaraderie is great especially considering that the metal scene, although growing, is not exactly what I would term massive. Friday night rolls around and we flock off to one of the few local watering holes that cater to our music needs and entering the venue, hugs and kisses abound. We bang our heads and raise our horns together to the sounds of something we all love. This is our family. This is our passion. Why then all the bullshit? It might sound like I am whining here but bear with me; you might find you feel the same way...

People in general like to complain and metal-heads are no different. I was messing around of Facebook no too long ago and I saw that a well-known concert organiser had put a poll up asking people what their favourite bands were and which bands they would like to see in SA as there was talk of said organiser putting together a metal festival with a few international bands. I immediately went through a few of the comments and I was shocked. For every few band suggestions there were one or two people who, instead of having their say by voting, insisted on telling the previous lot of voters how ‘crap’ their band suggestions were and as would be expected, arguments broke out. What is the point of that? Why not rather vote for the bands you want to see and leave it at that rather than lambasting another voter with rude comments just because they don’t like the exact same bands that you like? I wonder.

Shortly after that debacle, the concert organiser posted a line-up for this hypothetical music festival based on the bands that had been most requested in the poll. The list included Slayer, Disturbed and two or so other bands that I can unfortunately not remember the names of. The very first comment I read was negative. Now the naysayers had turned their attention and were attacking the organiser saying that this was a pathetic line-up with only one decent band and they would not bother to come to the festival if it happened. The funny thing is, it’s those same people that like to bitch and moan about the lack of international bands that come to this country. What exactly is it that they think they are achieving? Nothing positive, I can assure you. Another thing worth considering is that an SA band might be given an opportunity to open for the international act thereby greatly helping them with their music careers. A little positivity can go a long way.

On the 11^th of February this year, Johannesburg welcomed well-known German band, Rammstein into its concrete, smoggy bosom. The tickets sold out extremely quickly (I took a little sabbatical from work so that I could run around town looking for mine) and the atmosphere at the venue was electric. Our heads were still reeling from the show a while afterwards. Although Rammstein is not everyone’s cup of beer, even the non-fans agreed that their visit to this country would do a world of good when it came to getting other bands here. Why then the negativity when a metal festival was suggested? It baffles the mind. A few international acts have reached our shores but not nearly enough to satiate the ravenous appetite of the thousands-strong metal horde.

By all means, support your favourite bands local and international, if you don’t then you cannot call yourself a fan but don’t try to ruin it for the rest of us because in the end, we will all benefit. You are a part of this family too, my brothers.

Untitled so far...

I lazily opened one eye and tried to judge what the time was by the amount of light filtering into the tent. I reckoned that it must have been around 6am. Once you have been to enough music festivals, you learn to read these sorts of things.

It was the first morning of the four day long party called Thornfest. I clambered around the mess that was my tent until I eventually found my phone. It read 06:12am. I was close enough. ‘Rise and shine’, I thought to myself, ‘don’t let the fact that you have only had two and a half hours sleep get you down,’ I found my jacket and a pair of sunglasses that didn’t belong to me and stumbled out of the tent. ‘Good morning.’ said my neighbours. I could tell by looking at them that they had not slept. They looked a little worse for wear and were still gulping down beer.

I always like getting up early at festivals to do a bit of people-watching. You can see people that have fallen asleep on stranger’s camping chairs because they could not find their tents and those who are awake, all be they horribly intoxicated, and still trying to find their tents. It’s a little sad to see but in their defence, when you have thousands of tents all stuck up close to each other, it’s a little difficult to get around and all of them are either brown, green or navy-blue.

My drunken neighbours offered me some of the bacon and eggs that they were merrily frying up and I accepted. Who am I to turn down a free breakfast? Halfway through my much-needed meal I heard a rustling in my mate’s tent and greeted her with a big smile. As she stepped out she gave me one look and greeted me with the universal hand signal for ‘please don’t make such a noise, I’m hung-over’.

 ‘Sorry’, I said to her “How did you sleep? Or should I say, did you sleep?’

‘I think I passed out at about 5am.’ She replied while holding a cold bottle of water up against her forehead.

I held out my plate and offered her a bit of bacon but she gave me a sideways glance and shook her head. I feel sorry for people that go over-board on the first night. They don’t seem to bear in mind that it is a four day long festival and they don’t need to squeeze four days into the first ten hours. Another person suddenly popped his head out of my friend’s tent. I had never seen this guy before and knew better than to ask her so I just smiled.

I reached my hand into my handbag and grabbed the bands list. One hundred bands play at this festival and there were only a handful I was interested in watching. I put six drinks into my cooler bag and gave my friend one.

‘Drink up, girl,’ I said, ‘tonight we do it all again.’

Middle America.

It was a typical Friday afternoon when I took my usual seat at my usual booth in the diner I always went to before carting my tired body back to my motel room for another night alone with my pizza and budget beer. The heat was stifling as it always was at this time of year and I was sure that if I wrung out my shirt, I could fill a cup with sweat. It would probably taste better than the shit they serve here.

I always liked to people-watch. I could sit at that table, staring out of the window for hours while the world bustled by and that revolting film formed over the crappy coffee that I ordered but never planned to drink. I had to order it or they would impolitely ask me to leave the premises to make place for the over-weight family with screaming kids who enjoyed gorging their pimpled faces on the piles of discoloured grease that this fine establishment marketed as hamburgers.

The place smelled of old oil and cigarettes and ‘Jailhouse Rock’ was crackling through on the busted AM/FM on the corner of the counter. I stared at the piece of ribbon caught in the air-conditioning unit and found myself thinking, if this gets anymore ‘cliché, Mickey & Malory and going to walk through the door.

I had my head down, staring at the stains on the table when Amanda the waitress came waddling up to my table. I didn’t need to look up to know it was Amanda. After this many years of visiting this place I would know that cheap perfume smell and those varicose veins anywhere. ‘Just coffee.’ I said. She grunted. I was not a big tipper.

A young girl walked in closely followed by a relatively well dressed boy. First date, I thought. It had to be. No one ever got dressed up to crawl around this shit-hole. The cockroaches were cleaner than half the scum here. For some reason I took comfort in this.

I didn’t recall seeing the young couple before. Being a bit of a voyeur on these sorts of matters, I watched. She batted her eyelashes, stroked her auburn hair behind her ear and naughtily licked the ice cream off of her spoon. She had done this before. He was smitten.

Unfortunately, I was not the only one who had been surveying this ‘young-love scene’. There was an elderly man sitting at the counter with that all-too-familiar twinkle in his eye. ‘He likes them young’ I thought to myself.

Before long, the old-timer came up to the love-birds’ table. ‘How’r ya doin’ sweetheart?’ he said to the girl, ‘this boy treatin’ ya well?’ Every hair stood up on the boy’s body as these words slid off the tabbacco-stained tongue of the pervert that had taken place standing behind the girls left shoulder. He is staring down her shirt, I reckoned, now captivated by the scene.

The boy politely told the old snake where he could stick it but the man would have none of that. He stared the young boy straight in the eye as he slowly, with his gnarled left hand, lightly swept the girl’s dress sleeve off of her trembling shoulder and motioned it down onto her pert breast.

‘FUCK YOU, YOU PERVERT!’ screamed our hero as he leapt forward and struck the old man on the jaw.

He fell.

She stood.

‘WE’RE GETTING OUT OF HERE! C’MON!’

She stood.

‘WHAT’S WRONG WITH YOU?’ asked the boy now trembling from adrenaline.

Still she stood.

Lifting her dress to expose her pale, silky thigh, she reached higher up her leg and then lowered her hand revealing a small hand gun. She pointed it at the boy and fired.

‘That’ll teach ya to hurt my papa.’