Dog Eat Dog: A Novel

fourteen

fourteen The sound of trains slowing up at nearby Phefeni station echoed through the neighbourhood. It was growing dark outside.The music was getting louder and there were the sounds of revving cars and shouting in the street. It was easy to tell that the party had already started. ‘Whoooie! No kwaito, no party! No girls, no party! No beer, no party!’shouted Themba. I went inside the house to excuse myself. We had put off leaving for the party until eight o’clock, as Lerato had come up with a brilliant idea. Since food was going to be sold at a buffet at the party, it was better for us to buy it there. There was no need for us to worry about the shops closing down before we bought our spy kos. As we walked down the street I saw many drunken people of all different ages in a pick-me-up mood. There were cars parked on the pavement all along the street. A couple of drivers had barricaded each end of the street so that it was completely impassable to traffic.The police would have to forget about driving their vans along the street to monitor the jollified crowd. While some people at one end of the street sat inside their lady-killer sports cars, those who had invested in sound systems were flaunting their large ear-splitting speakers. I am as sure as death that if you had that kind of a sound system in your car most girls wouldn’t give a damn about the size of your dick. Ladies – abantwana, abocherry, abonhwana, abonjunju, abobaby , mantombazane, abosweety, abomysister, abolovey – were prinked in their best tight jeans, hot pants, short dresses and miniskirts , revealing the best that they had. 98 Drunken guys – amajita, majimbos, amagents, abokawu – were busy harassing the ladies; engaged in endless flirtation in an attempt to procure a victim for a one-night stand. Everyone was trawling up and down the street searching for the best kwaito music from the parked cars. If Mdu’s Mashamplani song wasn’t humming enough they would go to the other end where B.O.P .’s Sgiya Ngengoma was playing. If Thebes’s Sokola Sonke wasn’t to their taste they would quickly turn to another corner where Brenda’s Weekend Special was pumping. While eating my spy kos of white bread and fried chips I wondered if the organisers had even bothered to consider their neighbours before planning such a party. I had heard that the party was organised as a six to six celebration. I began to think about the people who would suffer the most in the end, the residents. Apart from the clatter caused by the gaiety, the residents who lived along that street would be the ones left to clean up the mess while the pig-ignorant organiser would still be sleeping, suffering from babalazi. There was bound to be a carpet of disgusting litter : butts, roaches, used condoms, bottle caps, broken glass, used matchsticks, empty cans, papers and lost keys. The moans and groans of one-night stands would wake those residents who didn’t have a lockable gate. Even those with lockable gates couldn’t escape the bottles hurled from drunken partygoers , which might break their windows. Those who spent their last cents beautifying their gardens might as well resign themselves to finding their gardens stripped of flowers in the morning as the fly-by-night Romeos would have plucked them to charm their willing Juliets. Dog-lovers were likely to find their animals dead, stabbed with a broken bottle by an angry male party animal who had been trying to invade their yard for kinky sex. There would be empty bottles and dead bodies in the gardens, blood on the street and rape victims. All this would undoubtedly be followed by endless police interrogations of the innocent homeowners as they tried to locate the wrongdoers. 99 No one in the township would be surprised by any of this. Those of us who live there know that day in and day out people gad around trying to locate parties. The overwhelming pressure of the environment in which we live makes people pursue their own pleasure at whatever cost. Even if there is no money to spend on a party there are lots of fly-by-night loan sharks called mashonisa. They lend money and hold the...