here we are

I wonder where you are

I wonder if you are

tonight I read your boy’s essay

he said adopting is good

that a boy needs a dad to look up to

so we are, here

We sent Mike off on a mission to the US Commercial Service in Chaplin Street, Illovo. It was simple: deliver this envelope before 5pm. 

He careered off in the white bakkie with some dementedly funny stream of sentences, the moustache, black and curling on the bonnet and strict instructions to get the proposal, addressed to one Mr Johnny Brown to their fancy cream-coloured offices in time and on best behaviour.

Johnny Brown is the man. Some six-foot high and a few too many feet wide, voice like James Earl Jones and a drawling, old-fashioned mop of thick black curls to suit his beaming face. He reminded me of that feeling I had in New York of being in a movie all the time, though he was from Atlanta, of course, inevitably a direct descendant of slaves from Africa, now back on the arse end of the mother-continent nurturing business for General Motors in the gold town that is our home.

It had taken us, me and the drop-dead and salivate American PA with hair down to her arse, three whole months to get the meeting with Mr Brown. Really: three months to make a time to see us; about another solid hour to get from the parking lot into his office (US Security Services); and about 10 minutes for him to be charmed enough to request that we make him a short proposal in writing. Coming out of there the two of us were exhilarated, on the edge of life-changing signs, seeing US dollars in the sky.

Only now Mr Johnny Brown won’t take our calls or return them. The meeting had been so enthusiastic why would he renege with no explanation? We talk, we ponder, we get busy with other things but we wish we understood. We check the print out of the proposal for mistakes. There are not any. We phone every few days, we leave messages, we speak to a clipped PA on that side, she’s not saying anything more than she is afraid he is not available.  It is one of those I am thinking, all that work for shit, but why? I hate that feeling. I have to resolve it. I have to know why.

After another week I call again and am a little determined with Johnny’s PA who, reluctantly, says she does not think he ever wants to speak to me again. Dramatic stuff. She says she is not allowed to discuss the matter with me.  There’s a whole matter? A matter? It was a simple proposal for the USA to buy space on this trade show I’m running, yes or no. No matters. I am flabbergasted. Did we send the wrong proposal? Did we make some horrible mistake? Was there something in the envelope? I beg her to tell me what this big matter is about but she is purse-lipped. I am desperate, obsessed and cannot concentrate on anything else. What if we are inadvertently doing this same matter to everyone? We need to know what it is: I phone again late that afternoon and she puts me through to Mr Brown, just like that.

He will not let me speak. He says young lady your proposal caused a big problem for us here at the US Commercial Service. You stopped work here for a whole morning and we had to evacuate the entire building. I beg your pardon I say thinking what the fuck. I think it is best if you ensure that you refrain from ever contacting us again he says. But I say. But nothing he says. Just do not call us, do not phone me, do not phone my assistant, and do me a favour also, do not deliver anything here ever again, do you understand me young lady? Deliver? I’m thinking. Deliver? Michael! Johnny’s still drawling: We have had to report a security crisis to head office in the US and your name’s on that form. Head office? My name I ask? Why on earth? I beg your pardon Mr Brown I say, I am deeply sorry that whatever happened happened, but what happened Sir? Jesus, this is a ridiculous conversation. Would you mind please explaining Sir, what exactly happened? I am sorry but I do not understand - It was just a four-page proposal about a trade show?

Your driver he says. Oh God I knew. I’m right. I'm always right about Michael. That's why I got him. Your driver delivered that proposal to this office contrary to our instructions. But he was told to deliver it Sir Mr Brown I say, by us, how else could it have got there? Well I wish it had not he says Miss again with a capital. I wish we had never agreed to meet with you in the first place, you do not know young lady you would not believe young Missy I swear he said that, deep-south accent and all, how many forms I have to fill in as a result of that delivery. Look Mr Brown I say, I have said and I will say again, I am deeply sorry and regret that this happened but what happened? I leave out the what the fuck but he feels it and finally answers:

The package was delivered after 5 o’clock he says, which we specified was not permissable at all and you know that and we told you that, not under any circumstances, and your driver did not find our security guard right at the gate at that time because after five our guard is not at the gate but your driver insisted on still delivering the package at approximately ten past five. Yes, I say, and I am dying inside because I have realised we also have to tell our clients how we have managed to mess up this relationship we promised them we’d get going before we even started and I can hear from Mr Johnny Brown’s speech that there is no way on this earth that we are ever going to repair the damage. He finishes with: We had to blow it up.

Excuse me? I say, sorry? I think I said come again? Your proposal, he says, it had to be exploded in a controlled environment. It did I say? And again I think, no this is not a movie, this is true stuff going right in my ear. That costs us money you know, he says never mind the entire office of 200 people is evacuated, standing outside on the other side of the parking lot, waiting to hear if it is a bomb or not. A bomb I ask? Our proposal a bomb? That’s when I started laughing. Quickly, I covered my mouth so he would not hear the squeaks. Your driver threw it over the gate you know, he says. Did he really now I say, my body's jumping around inside itself, imagining Michael in a hurry pretending to be a newspaper delivery dude, I can see it happening as we are speaking. I am so sorry but by now I am finding it a bit hard to maintain the grovelling persona. Well, Mr Brown, I can only repeat that we never meant to do you any harm sir and we apologise profusely and I will write you a letter Mr Brown and then I started to laugh. Actually I’m howling. I beg your pardon he says. I think I better go now Mr Brown I say between wide-open yelps of delight, have a lovely day.

I could not keep a straight face with Mike either. I told you to deliver that proposal before five I said to him strictly, the laugh galloping around inside me. I know, he says, but the guy wasn’t there. Actually he was there, he says, because with Michael there’s always more, and it comes out fast, but he would not come out of that little box they put them in. It was only about five past and he wouldn’t come out so I threw the thing over and shouted for him to get it and then he came out and picked it up and started shouting at me so I just shouted back across the road that it was cool because at least I knew he had it and then I drove off.

I so dig it that they bombed our proposal. We have no dollars but we are drowning in glee.

He arrived at the office in the white bakkie with its flamboyant handle-bar moustache hand-drawn big on the bonnet by ardent friends, and a herd of screaming children on the back, overflowing with hilarity. Nothing unusual about that, you understand, though every time Michael arrived anywhere, the atmosphere changed to the order of exhileration and somehow, even though you may have anticipated this, for your sanity perhaps, it was always surprising. His timing, his entourage, the sense of leaking mirth.  

Those of us that knew him, knew there were always free children on the back of Michael’s bakkie, gleeful and stoked, encouraged to be their most wayward selves by the man with the short attention span who used to phone people and say “Hi it is me. You remember me. I’m the short, fat, Jewish balding gentleman.”  Though he was not fat, he said that just to distract you from any possibility of his vanity, and he would say what he said so fast that unless you were used to him, tuned in, you might have said excuse me, sorry, hello, but by then he would have already been three sentences ahead.

He had come to be our emissary, he said, a role he relished after creating it all by his own self until we were suitably and completely dependent, summonsed he said, and willing to go to the ends of his tether, which was not made of leather all these things he said, walking into the office mumbling good kids, fresh kids, only R5 each while simultaneously finding this to be another opportune moment to fondle the closest working woman whose consequent blushes were his moments of triumph.

The children were rounded up and told to stay in the garden and be good at games while we sent him off up the road to a Nedbank that was still there on Louis Botha Avenue in Orange Grove to go and make a deposit. None of us, though by that time we all knew better, had noticed that there was still a living creature on the back of the bakkie, one with a twitching tail that must somehow have conspired with Michael to lay low. Lusikisiki was a pitch-black Labrador just out of puppy, whose trembling temperament was not unlike our emissary’s, both born under an irrepressible moon.

Mike waltzes into the bank to make the deposit, making up an unfinished ditty in his head. He takes the dog in with him, unleashed. Don’t ask how he gets past the security guard at the door - which is always a stumbling feat requiring one person at a time to gain entry after a metal detection – and certainly no rules for dogs, but for sure it had something to do with talking ten to the dozen and not being bothered by uniforms and loving everyone. Most likely he befriended the guy and knew the names of his wives and most-favoured mistresses by the time the two of them were firmly ensconced in the banking hall.

Michael always, mostly always, had his way. He went past. He went around. He diverted, lots of verbiage all the while and, so innocently, which I have always wondered about, because he was. No one could be sure what had just happened, even after it was over. Even after he was long gone and they were recounting it to their wife over dinner, as if they had made it up and maybe they did, they could not be sure.

So Mike’s in the queue and the dog’s all over the show, exploring, frisky, up and down the queue, the sound of his claws on the tiles a new life experience for the manager, sniffing at dividing lines and sticking his nose in, causing consternation, disbelief and, for any one who felt like they wished it wasn’t Monday, some light relief I hope, with Mike making wisecracks and saying sorry but my wife is pregnant and I have to look after the hound or, he just followed me in here or nothing, and pretending, very well, like this was just another day, which he could do because to him, it was. And then Lusikisiki, who felt just as home as Mike did no matter where he went, takes a shit.

When he tells us the story you can tell that it’s a big shit, especially big for its out of place position, and that he probably watched it go down and make this stinking pile of poo in the hushed and hallowed hall, on the marble-granite gleaming flooring, without any thought. It certainly would not have embarrassed him and, most likely he didn’t even really think about it because dogs do take shits.  Michael only took responsibility for his own self. He probably never even said hey don’t do that or anything. Certainly he would not have thought he was at all involved. The dog was over there and he was Michael.

Then the part I like the most:

An anxious pretty teller comes out of the security door behind the glass counters with a pinched face from too much efficiency and filofaxes too young and a deposit slip, white with red lines, faint red lines and half the size of a tissue. She bends over and then squats in small but high and boring bank-uniform brown pumps, her green skirt tight, her jacket fitting, stockings the colour of charcoal against pink skin, her name badge perched on her lapel in shined-up plastic brass, and her bouncy hair curled just that morning, dippiteedood for absolute stability. In complete discomfort then, she tries, this poor teller, tentatively, too far away with one arm stretched to its limit, to pick up this pile of shit.

With the deposit slip.

The hypnotised queue looks everywhere else and see it all out of the corners of their eyes, the hot smell wafting up their noses past the lavender polish that is Nedbank’s flavour and Mike, ignoring it all because he’s now focused on another teller, telling her she can come and visit, she can wear those glasses no one will laugh, is making his own deposit, ours, the completion of what was then, his current mission in life.

For Chili on 24 April 2011

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don't go the same way every day

no no no not like that

you look so beautiful. what car rental company do you work for?

is this the best work you've ever done?

faeces with penis rising (star sign riposte)

when asked what he was doing to build the image of the nation, michael kier, master of the complimentary insult and probably the greatest host on earth, said "No man leave me alone now i'm busy." Here is his trowel, recently discovered and being put to good use on the embedded-artists' installation currently in progress in the Republic of Troyeville.

I am rather fond of my obsessions and this piece, carpentry by Mervyn Dowman and Michael Kier almost one thousand years ago, mosaic by me (including precious pieces of stone, ming and carnelian I found off the rocks at Double Mouth, Paradise Beach, Eastern Cape from an ancient ship that moved under the water to wash its treasures onto the shore, and some broken pieces of Boba's crockery inheritance), has a special place in my all-consuming cabinet.

We made two actually: one we left blank (just cast in wood) and gave it to the then Jhb City Mgr, Ketso Gordhan to motivate him to help us to use the famous building as a canvas for public art. He loved the idea of course. Everyone does, except maybe a few power full people who prefer branding and big blow-up balls ... err ... loud burp. I am sure Ketso tried with this nice-to-have skyline-changing confidence-building project, but Joburg's priorities are, as always, probably mostly focused on restructuring their billing system. Like I just got all my bills addressed to the late-great aforementioned M Kier after having been through what seemed like months of form-filling-in and queues to put them all in my name two years ago and my Auntie Bee (84 and living quietly on her own with many books) just got one for R67000.00 and (she doesn't read that much!), according to Radio 702, we are not alone, though this kind of thing does tend to make a person feel a bit like that bad movie with only Will Smith left in the world.

Perhaps the City of Joburg also needs to realign its skorokoro persona by going into deep contemplative reflection and repair mode. Anyway if they can't fix their finances like most of the rest of us perhaps they should rather get a more creative job, more suited to this unhinged city's psyche.

So yes - with regard to our own motivational scale model of the leaning tower of hillbrow:

We are about to fix it as I have come to believe its squiff demeanour does call on the spirit of the bezerk rats who then like to run amok in my bedroom, especially when I am having nice, clear, straight dreams at 3.30am. And also because there is something about my fond obsessions that is bad for my neck and squint tendencies, i.e. it is my new year's resolution to stop looking at everything sideways. And there's always a chance, while we are still here, heart beating fast, that at least one of my haunts will do more than say yes.

And for those interested in similar legends there is always http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_leaning_towers