Repressive Ol' Me

I was swimming in memory just now or maybe even the thought, that the Chloe saga was not to last, and when her boyfriend came onto the scene, soon to become her husband, I was left out of the weekend job at her Kingdom Shop altogether. I had been invited to a very awkward dinner one night in their Vredehoek residence and there was no coming back after that. They were in my opinion, a coterie of low minded drug-bogied heathen and their purpose was for Chloe, the Queen ant to surround herself with as a bubble to prevent any future "misunderstandings". They were there to compliment her regularly as the  and maybe my disrespect showed from the start of that evening. And admittedly, driving back from that time out on the town, I was left feeling some pretty void opening from inside of me. 

Some weekends before that night I had met the boyfriend in the day time at the shop and had commented that he must be the new store-hand. He wasn't fond of me after that, and I felt a vein of vengence - maybe even jealousy - sweep through the whole relationship that followed between Chloe and I. Chloe slowly hired less and less of me and more of young T. Whatever his name was. I forget it because it was like one of those farces that shouldn't be. It was synonymous with some item of clothing... oh yes, that's it, a tuxedo. His name was Tuks. He was a burly Zimbabwean who was always harassing the ladies in the shop but made about a billion dollars in sales.

Well she hired Tux permanently and that was the beginning of the end for me. It felt like another in a long list of social failures for me, another kick in the back, but in my defence, and depending on the situation, I am much liked by people, and since then I've talked on stage for a strip club owner. But that, of course, is another story that I won't bother to go into. It has been my part to play; a very social part. We are dealing here with the very fragile and finicky world of high society in Cape Town, quite a different scene to the dull and incomparably stupid scene of Johannesburg. Joburgers have no intelligence in their bones. Just money and visceral joys. Like misfits-type punk and Greek businessmen with flat South African accents.

I also remember another faux pas, which was suggesting Chloe listen to Nine Inch Nails. She was horrified, most probably because of the band's numerous references to rape. But what got me thinking of all of this was listening to Django Reinhardt. I had been lent a memory stick by Chloe and I'd put just about his whole discography on there. She had thanked me sincerely for it and I remember that one peppered element of daylight in a night time of doubt and ill-ease around her. She seemed to only respect confidence. Something I didn't have in the lavish amounts she expected.

Photo: Chloe Williams, Kingdom Shop Woodstock