The Defenestration
I had only visited Kyle two other times that year. This time he was padded up in a little room that looked like a fairly civilized environment for a 20-something year old. Kyle and I had known each other for 6 years and we had never run into any serious problems. The balcony outside was a particular highlight of the flat, and I thought it suited him well. I told him this too. His flatmate hadn't returned yet; a Chinese man of about the same age. After I got there, I handed him his energy drink and the smokes he had asked for. Things were getting expensive, but OK,"This is for a friend," I thought. Then he opened the gate and we gave a manly hug - the kind with the handshake that ends in a shoulder bump. We got into the lift which was tiny and seemed more suitable for carrying up buckets of paint when the place got built. It was a small, a claustrophobic-ally small flat with tight passageways and I remember thinking that if I were ever trapped, I would struggle to escape.
When we got into the house, there was a lot of stuff - the marks of a newly sophisticated man - on the shelves and on the corner directly opposite the door we entered, there was a mannequin - a jet black spectre - that had been splashed and smeared with various shades and colours of paint. In the center of it all was the lounge, which was where the couch, a big leather couch, was placed. It took us a while to get started in conversation, like it always did. Kyle and I were never great conversationalists together but something had kept us friends and I wasn't sure what. Really it was me who kept the friendship going. Out there was the mountain and I kept remarking how incredible the view was. In Cape Town, the mountains seem to impose on one with a sense of the almighty. They just give one the sense that anything can happen.
So, I said, after toe-ing around for things to say, how goes life, my man? He seemed a little more absorbed in thought than usual."Well, the thing is" he said, "I am struggling a little on the financial side of things. Just trying to get myself together. I had a contract which fell through." Some guy had given him a contract for a sound engineering project and then canceled at the last minute - Kyle was a sound engineer about 3 years out of college. Then we talked for a little while about girls. His girlfriend had just left him, so I gave him my condolences. "Yeah. I saw her at this music festival a while back," he told me. "She was walking around with stilts for her costume design" I said,"Oh man, that sounds kind of fitting for some reason."Yeah, I know, I'm still trying to figure out the possible psychological meanings of that." Kyle was never an expert at saying things in a psychoanalytic way that sounded convincing. He always smacked of amateurishness in his jargon. I let it fly.
I looked at him in his vest and his jeans which were all ripped up in sections in the style of Trent Reznor or one of the Marylin Manson band members. This was something I could never pull off, but he seemed to thrive of crazy fashion. This was sort of why I hung around him. He seemed to know things that I didn't. Things which seemed crazy to me were par for the course for him. They seemed to be falling apart in patches and in those patches were red fabric that was studded with square steel studs. I never judged him for this though. I sort of respected it. Anyone who can pull something off like that is worthy of a little respect. The only times I thought it was a little ridiculous was when he piqued my jealousy. Kyle was better at working with women than I. And they often used to compliment him on his fashion sense. At one time, in a neighboring suburb, in the communal block of flats where we both lived as students, I was on my way to a fashion audition. As I passed through the gate, an Indian girl said "Where are you going?" and I said "To a fashion shoot in seapoint," thinking she'd wish me well or congratulate me. But at that moment, Kyle was coming through the gate and she said "Kyle should really be the one going to a fashion shoot."My ego which I thought she'd ignite further, fell through the floor.
And that was how I regarded Kyle. Admittedly I was jealous, and when the jealousy appeared it invariably revolved around women. He always laid women. Always coaxed them to bed with him, and here was I, petty old me, still waiting for my first lay. I consoled myself with the thought that I was more decent than he. All his friends looked like grease monkeys. They always seemed to have dark eyes, slotted into dark holes in their heads, with something unwholesome about them in a way that only South Africans can understand. This unwholesomeness in an intergenerational thing. A lot of trash got blown here over the centuries from places in Europe.
At length, I asked Kyle rather sheepishly, for I hadn't seen him for quite a long while, a question that had been burning in my mind: I went about it in my usual roundabout way:
" I just need to head into the city to look for accommodation, or... Mind if I stay here overnight?I don't want to inconvenience you.""I'm sure that wouldn't be a problem. Only thing is I need to make sure with my flatmate when he gets back." We spoke a little while longer about life in general and I as usual complained about the types of people we face in the world. He agreed. We both didn't like people or the state of the world that much. We both felt alienated. But we felt cut off in different ways. For me, the world seemed to lack grace, serenity, charm. It seemed to lack real class. For him it was more a case of women not accepting him based on his class in society. And yet, to combat this, he had a really good - almost inborn - sense of art and style. His choice in music was impeccable and in cases where it wasn't metal or something that was tasteless like death metal, he usually showed up with something that was the domain of many well-to-do British lads.
Ty, the Chinese guy came in and we caught up as far as it was possible to do that. We didn't have much common ground so I tended to overcompensate. Obviously the usual questions: How are you and so on, and then since he didn't have much to say, being tired from the long day, I filled in with saying I was going to start a newspaper in the sunny suburb of Muizenberg. I wanted to call it the daily surf. And it would have stories and ideas in it. And it would have a section called the Chill set. I wasn't quite sure what that was going to be, but I just thought it sounded cool. We all laughed. He did too. Then I asked him rather awkwardly if it was okay if I could stay there. he didn't seem to mind. It was all fine by him.
Kyle was going out that night and said I was welcome to join him. It was a karaoke night out in the outskirts of the city. The kind of place where all the grunge kids still hang out. The Diamond Shed. There was nothing hip about the place, and I was fairly hip, but I said, well alright then, I'll come with. My karaoke skills weren't too hot, but that was fine. We carted all of my stuff up into the the elevator and into his flat. Surfboard, laptop, and tog bag with all my clothes in it. Then we were off into the night .I commented that the sky looked like a big ream of sheet metal. He laughed and agreed as we rolled out into the main night, tin doors and pieces of cardboard lining the roads., the excitement of the night and many nights before drawing us onward.
Well, when we got there it was the same old bunkum as before. Windows boarded up; the place looking like a dump as usual: The Place being the Purple Onion. It was the kind of place where someone could go missing behind a stairwell or something and nobody would realize until the next morning. Well when we first came in the door, they were busy lining up the karaoke bar. But the first person Kyle introduced to me was a guy who looked like a loser man trying to look like a farmer. When I approached him, he declared his name to be Oom Piet. "What a pathetic looking man," I thought. But I maintained a straight face. He looked like he was always on the verge of declaring something really funny, but didn't quite have the brain cells for the project.
The feelings were ones of general awkwardness as I stumbled round the bar in my mind. Oom Piet with his Hawaiian shirt and socks declared that I should do one of the first songs of the night. So I did. It was Bowie's Moonage Daydream. Some of them laughed at the offbeat lyrics. It was, as I remember it, a kind of morose laughter. No soul behind it. Just a casual grunt. I was trying to maintain humour, but the feelings was as one fighting a sandstorm. I couldn't quite get my mind straight for the process of integrating with these people. They were all burnt out crusts of people, actually. So I cultivated the mindset that these people weren't my type and continued along that evening as if they couldn't harm me with all their non-chalant attendance of the new guest.
The evening wore on and I was getting a beer at the bar. For Kyle, it was a Tafelberg. That, he claimed was "a very good beer."They put it on a tab and I thought I'd settle it later. Then I see him texting this girl of his that was to appear later that evening. He said they'd hooked up or whatever and that she would probably come in later.
Okay, I said, and then we began talking about philosophy. I said "I've got this new idea. The static man and the man of movement." He said; Sure. So the Static man would be the emotions and the moving man would be action. I had to think about that, but it didn't ring true with me. I did not see it that way so I simply hesitated, and he tried to re-explain it. I broke in and I said, that sure, it could be but it was different to that. We ended up changing the subject. Then he ended up singing Broken with a girl who was probably the most attractive in the room. She had a guy for a stick as a boyfriend. He had long hair and he looked like he was going bald. Kyle and the girl sang the song pretty well. In fact they pulled it off brilliantly; they both had great singing voices.
I was getting bored yet I tried to look interested in something that was going on; anything. At this point the most obvious target for my attention was the girl next to me who was pretty ugly and plump and who had frizzy hair. She asked what I did, I said I was interested in stock investing. She said her dad had a tonne of money put away for her; I can't remember how much. and that he invested in property, and that she was an artist who made props for movie sets. So you're a "maker"? I joked. "Yes," She said in assent; "I'm a maker."
Then she came - Stephanie that is = and I wasn't too interested in her. I sat by her table and she didn't say much. I thought she was a bit weird and that there wasn't anything between us. The guys at the bar sang song after song, and I kept going up there to ask if I could sing another song, but apparently it wasn't an open event. Certain people got elected to sing. That was just how it was. So I sat at the table and as they sat Hakuna Matata I cracked a joke with the girl. I held my lapels and said this is how I try to look normal in such situations. I had a big cheesy grin on my face and my elbows were spread out extravagantly to my sides as if I were desperately trying to look normal. That made her laugh.
The next thing, Kyle was sitting down and they were discussing various things, but I was asking her what her "path" was in life. She laughed and shrugged her shoulders and her eyes looked elfish when she did that. When she crumpled her nose like that, it also showed that she had an Afrikaans Grandmother somewhere who was somewhat small-minded and that she was in actual fact, a true Dutchman of the Free State country. I sat still for a while and then I said, well I'm 32 and I still don't know what I'm doing either. She said that that's quite a thing, and she thought 24 was the limit. I said, no it's not. Then I got to talking about how I'd made 200,000 from bitcoin from only 8000 and how I lost it all because I didn't want to pay Zuma his tax money. Actually, I'm not sure if I mentioned Zuma, but I did tell her that my ideal way of working would be not to work at all. And I remember her filling in my sentence. When I said "I don't really"... she completed it, "want to work."
There were lots of things that happened that night that I don't really remember, but one of them was that she seemed impressed that I was invested in the company that owns Savannah. Then we probably didn't say much and I felt I needed to get out and take a breath of fresh air.
Well I went outside away from all the din and started talking about the need for a modern Jesus. The people didn't like it so much. I said the problem was there was no one to give the place structure or form. There needed to be an alpha male to tie the whole thing together. A modern Jesus. A modern Jesus, said the bouncer? What are you talking about? I said, someone who can be a real man about things, and doesn't settle for mediocre art like this and has intelligence and makes sense, because none of this makes sense!
When we got into the house, there was a lot of stuff - the marks of a newly sophisticated man - on the shelves and on the corner directly opposite the door we entered, there was a mannequin - a jet black spectre - that had been splashed and smeared with various shades and colours of paint. In the center of it all was the lounge, which was where the couch, a big leather couch, was placed. It took us a while to get started in conversation, like it always did. Kyle and I were never great conversationalists together but something had kept us friends and I wasn't sure what. Really it was me who kept the friendship going. Out there was the mountain and I kept remarking how incredible the view was. In Cape Town, the mountains seem to impose on one with a sense of the almighty. They just give one the sense that anything can happen.
So, I said, after toe-ing around for things to say, how goes life, my man? He seemed a little more absorbed in thought than usual."Well, the thing is" he said, "I am struggling a little on the financial side of things. Just trying to get myself together. I had a contract which fell through." Some guy had given him a contract for a sound engineering project and then canceled at the last minute - Kyle was a sound engineer about 3 years out of college. Then we talked for a little while about girls. His girlfriend had just left him, so I gave him my condolences. "Yeah. I saw her at this music festival a while back," he told me. "She was walking around with stilts for her costume design" I said,"Oh man, that sounds kind of fitting for some reason."Yeah, I know, I'm still trying to figure out the possible psychological meanings of that." Kyle was never an expert at saying things in a psychoanalytic way that sounded convincing. He always smacked of amateurishness in his jargon. I let it fly.
I looked at him in his vest and his jeans which were all ripped up in sections in the style of Trent Reznor or one of the Marylin Manson band members. This was something I could never pull off, but he seemed to thrive of crazy fashion. This was sort of why I hung around him. He seemed to know things that I didn't. Things which seemed crazy to me were par for the course for him. They seemed to be falling apart in patches and in those patches were red fabric that was studded with square steel studs. I never judged him for this though. I sort of respected it. Anyone who can pull something off like that is worthy of a little respect. The only times I thought it was a little ridiculous was when he piqued my jealousy. Kyle was better at working with women than I. And they often used to compliment him on his fashion sense. At one time, in a neighboring suburb, in the communal block of flats where we both lived as students, I was on my way to a fashion audition. As I passed through the gate, an Indian girl said "Where are you going?" and I said "To a fashion shoot in seapoint," thinking she'd wish me well or congratulate me. But at that moment, Kyle was coming through the gate and she said "Kyle should really be the one going to a fashion shoot."My ego which I thought she'd ignite further, fell through the floor.
And that was how I regarded Kyle. Admittedly I was jealous, and when the jealousy appeared it invariably revolved around women. He always laid women. Always coaxed them to bed with him, and here was I, petty old me, still waiting for my first lay. I consoled myself with the thought that I was more decent than he. All his friends looked like grease monkeys. They always seemed to have dark eyes, slotted into dark holes in their heads, with something unwholesome about them in a way that only South Africans can understand. This unwholesomeness in an intergenerational thing. A lot of trash got blown here over the centuries from places in Europe.
At length, I asked Kyle rather sheepishly, for I hadn't seen him for quite a long while, a question that had been burning in my mind: I went about it in my usual roundabout way:
" I just need to head into the city to look for accommodation, or... Mind if I stay here overnight?I don't want to inconvenience you.""I'm sure that wouldn't be a problem. Only thing is I need to make sure with my flatmate when he gets back." We spoke a little while longer about life in general and I as usual complained about the types of people we face in the world. He agreed. We both didn't like people or the state of the world that much. We both felt alienated. But we felt cut off in different ways. For me, the world seemed to lack grace, serenity, charm. It seemed to lack real class. For him it was more a case of women not accepting him based on his class in society. And yet, to combat this, he had a really good - almost inborn - sense of art and style. His choice in music was impeccable and in cases where it wasn't metal or something that was tasteless like death metal, he usually showed up with something that was the domain of many well-to-do British lads.
Ty, the Chinese guy came in and we caught up as far as it was possible to do that. We didn't have much common ground so I tended to overcompensate. Obviously the usual questions: How are you and so on, and then since he didn't have much to say, being tired from the long day, I filled in with saying I was going to start a newspaper in the sunny suburb of Muizenberg. I wanted to call it the daily surf. And it would have stories and ideas in it. And it would have a section called the Chill set. I wasn't quite sure what that was going to be, but I just thought it sounded cool. We all laughed. He did too. Then I asked him rather awkwardly if it was okay if I could stay there. he didn't seem to mind. It was all fine by him.
Kyle was going out that night and said I was welcome to join him. It was a karaoke night out in the outskirts of the city. The kind of place where all the grunge kids still hang out. The Diamond Shed. There was nothing hip about the place, and I was fairly hip, but I said, well alright then, I'll come with. My karaoke skills weren't too hot, but that was fine. We carted all of my stuff up into the the elevator and into his flat. Surfboard, laptop, and tog bag with all my clothes in it. Then we were off into the night .I commented that the sky looked like a big ream of sheet metal. He laughed and agreed as we rolled out into the main night, tin doors and pieces of cardboard lining the roads., the excitement of the night and many nights before drawing us onward.
Well, when we got there it was the same old bunkum as before. Windows boarded up; the place looking like a dump as usual: The Place being the Purple Onion. It was the kind of place where someone could go missing behind a stairwell or something and nobody would realize until the next morning. Well when we first came in the door, they were busy lining up the karaoke bar. But the first person Kyle introduced to me was a guy who looked like a loser man trying to look like a farmer. When I approached him, he declared his name to be Oom Piet. "What a pathetic looking man," I thought. But I maintained a straight face. He looked like he was always on the verge of declaring something really funny, but didn't quite have the brain cells for the project.
The feelings were ones of general awkwardness as I stumbled round the bar in my mind. Oom Piet with his Hawaiian shirt and socks declared that I should do one of the first songs of the night. So I did. It was Bowie's Moonage Daydream. Some of them laughed at the offbeat lyrics. It was, as I remember it, a kind of morose laughter. No soul behind it. Just a casual grunt. I was trying to maintain humour, but the feelings was as one fighting a sandstorm. I couldn't quite get my mind straight for the process of integrating with these people. They were all burnt out crusts of people, actually. So I cultivated the mindset that these people weren't my type and continued along that evening as if they couldn't harm me with all their non-chalant attendance of the new guest.
The evening wore on and I was getting a beer at the bar. For Kyle, it was a Tafelberg. That, he claimed was "a very good beer."They put it on a tab and I thought I'd settle it later. Then I see him texting this girl of his that was to appear later that evening. He said they'd hooked up or whatever and that she would probably come in later.
Okay, I said, and then we began talking about philosophy. I said "I've got this new idea. The static man and the man of movement." He said; Sure. So the Static man would be the emotions and the moving man would be action. I had to think about that, but it didn't ring true with me. I did not see it that way so I simply hesitated, and he tried to re-explain it. I broke in and I said, that sure, it could be but it was different to that. We ended up changing the subject. Then he ended up singing Broken with a girl who was probably the most attractive in the room. She had a guy for a stick as a boyfriend. He had long hair and he looked like he was going bald. Kyle and the girl sang the song pretty well. In fact they pulled it off brilliantly; they both had great singing voices.
I was getting bored yet I tried to look interested in something that was going on; anything. At this point the most obvious target for my attention was the girl next to me who was pretty ugly and plump and who had frizzy hair. She asked what I did, I said I was interested in stock investing. She said her dad had a tonne of money put away for her; I can't remember how much. and that he invested in property, and that she was an artist who made props for movie sets. So you're a "maker"? I joked. "Yes," She said in assent; "I'm a maker."
Then she came - Stephanie that is = and I wasn't too interested in her. I sat by her table and she didn't say much. I thought she was a bit weird and that there wasn't anything between us. The guys at the bar sang song after song, and I kept going up there to ask if I could sing another song, but apparently it wasn't an open event. Certain people got elected to sing. That was just how it was. So I sat at the table and as they sat Hakuna Matata I cracked a joke with the girl. I held my lapels and said this is how I try to look normal in such situations. I had a big cheesy grin on my face and my elbows were spread out extravagantly to my sides as if I were desperately trying to look normal. That made her laugh.
The next thing, Kyle was sitting down and they were discussing various things, but I was asking her what her "path" was in life. She laughed and shrugged her shoulders and her eyes looked elfish when she did that. When she crumpled her nose like that, it also showed that she had an Afrikaans Grandmother somewhere who was somewhat small-minded and that she was in actual fact, a true Dutchman of the Free State country. I sat still for a while and then I said, well I'm 32 and I still don't know what I'm doing either. She said that that's quite a thing, and she thought 24 was the limit. I said, no it's not. Then I got to talking about how I'd made 200,000 from bitcoin from only 8000 and how I lost it all because I didn't want to pay Zuma his tax money. Actually, I'm not sure if I mentioned Zuma, but I did tell her that my ideal way of working would be not to work at all. And I remember her filling in my sentence. When I said "I don't really"... she completed it, "want to work."
There were lots of things that happened that night that I don't really remember, but one of them was that she seemed impressed that I was invested in the company that owns Savannah. Then we probably didn't say much and I felt I needed to get out and take a breath of fresh air.
Well I went outside away from all the din and started talking about the need for a modern Jesus. The people didn't like it so much. I said the problem was there was no one to give the place structure or form. There needed to be an alpha male to tie the whole thing together. A modern Jesus. A modern Jesus, said the bouncer? What are you talking about? I said, someone who can be a real man about things, and doesn't settle for mediocre art like this and has intelligence and makes sense, because none of this makes sense!
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