Wednesday, May 12, 2010, Johannesburg

(This was written in 2010 and was originally published in Vixxen magazine, September 2010. Illustration by Joe Doe)

The chord was stuck in my head playing over and over again, monotonously. Brain thumped with red wine hang over, chills gripping me then passing into nausea. I open my eyes, it is morning. I only know this because there is a lance of light streaking through the heavy curtains. The curtains are on my left, this is not my room. I panic momentarily and turn my head. Not my bed, not a bird that I know. Not the universe I wake up in on a regular occasion. I sit up, and look hard at the bird, trying to remember details of the night before. Where did it start? What’s today? Wednesday, last night was Tuesday. Band practice. No, band practice had been cancelled. Jazz was sick, or so he said. Wait Jazz, FUCK, I lost him at some point last night, outside a bar. Where was the bar? Think, think harder, a hazy memory of a blue lit alley, was the sign blue? Blue signs, blue signs, what bar has blue signs? None I visit regularly. Where were we before? Fuck, why is it all so patchy.  One step at a time, the beginning.  No band practice, where was I when I heard the news? At the Tikki, getting blazed and playing guitar with Lucky and Zee. Well Zee wasn’t blazing he’s not the type, and he wasn’t jamming either, it was just Lucky and I doing that. Business was slow, recession and all, Zee had no one to tat. I considered letting him give me one for shits and giggles, but thought better of it. Zee was tattoing himself.  Well preparing to when this bird walks into the shop. She was dressed in the height of 50’s rockabilly fashion, we all were, well with a modern twist of course. Wife beaters and skinny black jeans.  Leopard print dresses, showing off curves. Man’s ruin tattoed to an arm, a bird in a martini glass holding three aces. The song switches from Led Zep to a scratchy, low-down-dirty, blues number; Lucky got up, “Hey, what can I do you for?”

“My name Is Lula, firstly, secondly if you want to do me you look like you’d be a good shag – my car’s down stairs. And thirdly I want Zee to tattoo this to my skull” And with that she whips off her wig of glorious black bobbed hair, and hands Jade the design.  “You don’t look like you’re doing much else.”

Lucky takes the paper, not flinching at the bird’s forwardness, though you could see he was considering the idea of her shaven head banging against the car door. Lucky was like that, one tracked mind. And to be honest the bitch was fine.

“Pretty rad design, who did it?” he jerks his head a slight fraction upwards diverting his gaze to the birds rack.

“I don’t know.”

“Shweet, we got a special on at the moment, 3 hours of work for a grand.”

Lucky handed me the design, it was weird, almost like you couldn’t tell where one line started and the next began. I could see many things in it, faces, and patterns, all merging and changing from beast to creature to infinite nothing. I pulled back into reality. Do you want it this size?

“It has to be done free handed, it doesn’t have to be perfect, as long as the basic idea is there. I hear you’re the best.” She directed her gaze at Zee, who shrugged, cocking his head a little to the left in an off-handish manner.  I handed him the design, he looked at it, put it down, and put on his gloves. “Sit” he says, pointing to the already prepped bench. He wiped her head, and began working. I was mesmerized, watching the shapes grow outwards from the centre of the birds cranium. They had their own life it seemed, stretching out as the needle buzzed away, insistant on getting its job done, Zee merely acting as part of the machine. He was oblivious to Lucky and I. The bird didn’t flinch once, just sat there as all the dreams and nightmares one could imagine spread across down the back of her neck, and ran down her spine, I don’t remember her taking her top off, but she there she was topless, Zee still working, then her pants were off, the forms spiralling down the inside of her thigh. Lucky was kissing her, pulsating his fingers on her clit, gently at first then harder and faster bringing her to climax, while Zee worked on her exposed flesh. And I watched, until it was over, the spell broken. She had left by then.

“What the fuck man? What the fuck just happened?”  Those words were coming out of my mouth.

“Awesome hey, never seen you play like that before in your life.” Said Lucky grinning.

“Play? Play what man?” I didn’t trust his grin.

“That song you were jamming man it was intense.”

“Yeah dude,” said Zee glancing up from his arms, the needle still buzz buzzing away.

I left the shop, thoughts of distrust running through my mind, thoughts of taking Lucky’s head and smashing a needle through his eye. Why would he lie, coz he’s a cunt, that’s why. He’s just trying to confuse me. A beggar woman stopped me outside Cantina, gave me a sob story, showed me her mangled tit. Says she needs money to get to the hospital, to buy bread, anything. I give her the Fanta I was sipping on, it’s warm and flat but it’s all I have. Gotto give give give, it all comes back. That’s how it works here. Nobody has a lot, but we all have something to give. Even if it’s a jab in the eye for being a filthy cunt rag. I kept replaying that image over and over in my head, feeling Lucky’s eye give way to the sharp sharp needle, his mouth twisting in surprise and terror, till I got back to the flat.  I don’t remember the walk really. Or what happened between lighting a few candles and the phone call. It was the bird from the shop. I knew Lucky was lying. “Meet me at Billy Psychos, you know it right?” Yeah, I knew it. Just off Louis Botha, the only place you could get a drink and smoke a blunt at 3am free from interference from the piggies. I checked my watch, 12am. What had I been doing for the past 4 hours? I grabbed the keys. Blew out what was left of the candles, and headed out, locking up behind me. Grabbed a taxi bus, had to hop in front, I hate being change man. Interacting with people when I’m not in the mood. The taxi screamed up empire and swung a reckless short left onto Louis Botha, the driver took another swig from his juice bottle. Pumps the music loader; the party in the back heats up. I jump out at the next stop walk the last couple of blocks, it’s not as cold as it could be for this time of year. Soon the cold will be heading straight down to the core of your bones, and spread out through your rib cage, leaving you feeling thin and degenerated, while you cough black mucus out of your lungs because the air is so dry. Billy’s is located in a side alley, I only ever know which one the right road is by peering down looking for the fairy lights on the balcony. I find it, turn left, the door buzzes me in, there’s a camera outside, but I don’t know where it is. No one I know as I walk up the stairs; just birds, with pointy noses that are too long for their faces, giving me the ‘What you doing here? Punk Boy’ attitude. I ignored them. Walked into the small crowded bar, got a drink, sat in the corner. The bird wasn’t there in amongst the late night crowd as far as I could tell. I checked around to see if any new alien sightings had been posted on the walls. There were always headlines about aliens now a days. “Illegal aliens massacred”, “Aliens removed from city centre”, and my favourite of the night “Alien trafficked my baby”. I spied a hottie at the bar, short red hair, crazy tats running down her neck. Her back was to me, so I walked in close behind her and whispered, “Sweet fuck you are fine” into her ear.  She leans in close to me, tilts her head upwards, it’s the bird from the shop. Just with a different wig. “Hey Tiger, want to have some fun, seeing as you missed out earlier?” I pull away, “Ah eh. You’re coming back to Lucky with me.”  I took her hand- it felt cold, clammy, fish like. We walked down stairs, downed my beer at the door at the request of the bouncer, and headed up to the main road to catch a taxi bus.

The bitch didn’t say one word the whole trip just sat there while I planned my revenge on Lucky. I knew the cunt rag fucker was lying. Knew it like I knew there was shit in the last chick I licked’s cunt hair. I bashed on Lucky’s door. Grating my knuckles on the security bars. Which only made me angrier, I was still in control though. Could give the lanky fucker a right talking to and a small thumping for lying through his skeef toothed grin. No body answered. I knew he was here, or Jazz was here, he was sick right. Wouldn’t be elsewhere if he was sick. I stopped hammering. Took the birds slimy fish hand, and stormed down the stairs back onto fourth ave, straight to Mama’s, he was probably playing foos, drunk the fuck, stead of sleeping nice nice for work in the morning. I cool down as I walk across the street, don’t want to lose face by getting rowdy at the wrong cat.  Walk through the door, greet the waiter, walk to the bar, looking cool calm and collected. I order two brandy specials, still holding the chicks claw. I lean up against the bar, checking out the place, a few familiar faces. No one I’d talk to, I check the foos table, and there are the boys, sickly Jazz and cunt Lucky, looking like their on a real streak. High fiving, and laughing behind my back. I head for the table, the bird in tow. Weird how she never says anything. Chicks usually natter on about nothing. “Not look so sickly now, eh Jazzy boy?” I say patting him, heavy like, on the shoulder.   “Got sick of being in the house man, you know. Still not feeling hundreds. Not even drinking mate. Only been here a half hour.” Lies, defensive fucking lies I thought. “Sure mate, like you to meet this bird.” Lucky and Jazz turn to look where I’m gazing. There was no bird there, I was holding her hand two seconds before and she’d vanished. Fuck. I see her by the bar, heading for the door, and speed out after her onto the street. “Skitzo mofo!” Lucky yells at my receeding leathers.  Cunt.

 The bitch is a little further down the street, standing under a street light. The glow makes her tattoos shine fluorescent greens and yellows, weird – never seen ink like that before. She’s gazing up at the light, a cyber punk moth caught in the spines of technology. I get closer, her tattoos are moving, creating layers of reality drifting slowly past each other, the cogs spinning away slowly. I stand mesmerized as they melt off of her body onto the concrete and slide like surf towards my Docs. “The mothership is coming.” She says as the layers of ink distort my feet, they become merely the idea of feet, wrapped in layers of fluid meaning.  I feel warm comfort as notions of stability and convention are replaced with a deeper understanding of what reality is not. I can no longer see the bird, or the street, or the shops, or the Jo’burg skyline that sits off in the distance. I can no longer understand what these thoughts mean, or why they have any relevance. I am alone in the haze of images, ideas, breaking apart like clouds in a blender. Reconstituted as part of the whole. I am the bird, the street, the city that manifests itself through man. I am no longer man. I am beyond man, beyond earth, beyond universe. I am the beginning, I am the end. I have transcended.

And here I am in this bed, but it’s my bed, and there’s no bird. Just a ringing cell phone; Jazz’s name flashing on the screen. “Yo,” I say pushing the green button.

“Lucky’s dead, someone beat the shit out of him outside Mama’s.”

A gleeful grin spreads across my jaw. The Lucky cunt deserved it. 

Illustration by Joe Doe