Reload Night Club, Capetown
05/28/10
“Eeeiiiooo!” Boxie-boo yelped after taking a zip of her vodka soda. It was either really stiff or she was suffering from irritable vowel syndrome, or trying to communicate with an ewok. We were drinking inside the African Hearts Backpacker, after a rainy day spent boldly going nowhere. The booze and oversleeping made me so slow my own life seemed to pass me by. I was mentally prepared to do everything the wrong way. Sorry to brag. In honour of the Earth, I asked it to revolve around me. This failed, so after hours updating this website (you’re welcome), the group of us - German brothers and the Dutch girl - decided to get hammered.
Surgeon General’s Warning: Drinking alcohol decreases the chances of wearing pants.
Heading to the bar, the night had reduced the skyline to thin, silent triangulars. I followed, as always, a half-step behind Boxie-boo to make sure she was safe. Lights advertising open bars flickered like silent film. We moved under the lengthening, winged shadow of time, the darkness drifting in the way curtains dance in unseen wind: Dark metal passing cars, barely visible concrete, smelling terrific. The thin, silver moonlight waved in puddles from the day’s rain. Capetown’s homeless slept on the damp concrete outside various bars, some in positions so uncomfortable I presumed they must have passed out.
I had been stalked by potential salesman so many times in Africa and Asia, I found myself suspicious of my own shoes. They are following me…. Instead of salesmen, we were met by beggars. Many beggars.
I was glad to notice that they bouncers in South Africa were not as attracted to me as they are in Canada. Back home, bouncers think I’m so cute they usually ask me to stand next to them while they make everyone else go inside, including Boxie-boo and her female friends.
The first bar we passed had white dudes in preppy suits and white women dressed in outfits normally reserved for movies that involve ’70s music, a pizza delivery man and bow-chicka-bow-wow. They were either prostitutes or unconfident enough with their personality that they decided to let their oompa loompa’s do the talking for them. Near falling out of their shirts, they said, “Putting on deodorant confuses me.” Had I told them I had spotted a dead bird, they would have looked up to the sky and asked where. These slutty-dressed women had the look of confusion at the line-up, as if trying to comprehend why it would be a bad idea to hide a spare set of car keys in the trunk.
“Should we go there?” I asked, sarcastically.
“I’m wearing too much clothes,” Boxie-boo responded. I suggested we take off our shirts and wait in line. Nobody laughed. So I did two minutes later, confusing everybody.
We continued. Bar after bar seemed separated by race - some had only white people, others black, few mixed. Having run out of gas on the road less travelled, I convinced everybody to check out a bar called Reload. At first, the locals stared at us and I wondered why. I remembered to wear my underwear on the inside of my pants. Nobody’s hair was on fire. Then I realized we were the only white people in the bar. At first we stood still, looking like a group of standing still people.
I was wearing socks. This is important.
Red and green lights spread in the low level haze of cigarette smoke, while laser lights stretched across the ceiling in narrow tubes. The DJ pumped house music, while the men danced around a local pool table, teasing those who missed shots. The bass bounced against the walls making my head feel compressed.
“I know it is strange at first to be the only white person in a bar,” I said to Tessa from Holland, only her second day in Africa. “Then you sit down and say hello and realize people are just as interested in you as you are in them.”
I went to the bar and ordered some drinks, then handed him a 10 Rand bill, thinking it was a 50, making it clearly understood that I was totally confused. Three sugar shots made me dizzy to the point where I could have lost at shadow boxing. The more I drank, the less I noticed the colour of my skin, which was a good thing. Though I sensed the others scanned the crowd standing too still, looking more out of place than a beluga whale at a tea party.
“I remember walking in and feeling uncomfortable at first,” Boxie-boo said, a day later. “It felt like we were the minority, that we did not belong. Then everybody welcomed us.”
The bar continuously became more and more packed. In my boozed out state, I found a couch by falling onto it and introduced myself to a guy named Akona. In front of him, his buddies smiled in our direction, showing off their funky dance moves, while I mimicked them with the smoothness of a decapitated chicken. Each time I looked away and turned back, Akona had topped off both our glasses with one the bar’s giant beers. Boxie-boo sat with Akona’s girlfriend on the couch next to our’s, constantly giggling as the two ladies made fun of us, possible for being too attractive.
“I’m glad you came,” Akona said. “White South Africans are afraid of us. You can go home and tell people we are good people.”
Now, I know that bold statement is not true for all white South Africans, but I did feel it was worth quoting as the separation between the whites and blacks depressed us at times. Back home in Canada, I like and dislike people of all races. Colour for most Canadians is an after thought. For example, I never think of my buddy Richard as a black friend or Farhan as a brown friend, simply a friend. In South Africa, the colour of one’s skin did seem to still dictate their status in society, from all white people in restaurants being served by all black staff, to black beggars asking for spare change at traffic lights from white people in fancy cars.
It seemed, almost immediately, the moment we be-friended one local, the rest wanted to speak with us, especially after learning we were from Canada and Europe. People constantly came by and asked us to dance, inquiried what we thought of Capetown and whether we were staying for the World Cup. Tessa quickly became one hot lady as the only single European girl at the bar. One of the German’s boys had himself a drunken makeout.
The rest of the night became a foggy hazy of memory. I remember walking Tessa back to the bar, when she came out asking us why we were leaving, as no woman should walk around a major African city at night by herself. I told her to walk home with the Germans. I remember passing a shop selling essential moisturizers, of which I had none, then realized I was lucky to be alive. By the time we made it back to our hostel, I laid on the bed and held on, as I feared being bucked off.
It was a fun night hanging out with some of the friendliest people we had met on our around the world trip.
That’s all for now.
Thank you for visiting Page59.com.
