I can never quite remember when I first saw him. That’s the thing about Party God—he’s part of the scenery; he’s always there. But you can never help but notice him.
They say there are people who light up a room when they enter it. When Party God enters a room, he takes it by the arm, slips it into something more comfortable, puts on its favourite song, gives it a tall glass of something vibrantly alcoholic, and then lights it up.
He arrives late, and on foot, because he’s always going somewhere, always on his way. He slides down the hallway, nodding his head coolly, taking off his jacket—depending on fashion and the weather. Then it’s into the kitchen to greet the host, who thanks heaven he’s arrived. Party God gives the host just enough time to think he wasn’t coming, but still enough time to give the party his indelible mark.
The host, and maybe a brother or sister or flatmate, try to corner him with a drink, but Party God’s already on his way, through to the lounge room to infiltrate the drinking circles and the dancing corners with a unique social osmosis. The beauty of Party God is that everyone’s sure he’s right next to them, reassuring their worth with his presence, but at the same he’s leaning against the wall across the room, one jean-leg bent, one t-shirt arm folded under the other, silently approving.
It’s later in the night when I have my first definite sighting. I’m out on the deck, sitting in a sunken chair, and he’s standing by the railing: probably smoking, probably not.
I wonder how many people will see Party God tonight, in living rooms and garages, patios and kitchens, all across this Saturday night city. Is he ever really there, or is he just a projection of a purple-golden place we’d all rather be? It could just be that I’m drunk.
Later still, when I’m dragged to the dance floor, I see Party God laughing, sitting on a stereo speaker in a way no one else can. Everybody’s happy and relaxed; it’s been a good night.
Party God dissolves the heat and the sticky floor and the sweaty faces, leaving shining, drink-softened memories behind him like a ship’s wake.
When it’s time to go home, when all that’s left are legs on armrests and empty bottle cities, we all look to Party God. We want to follow him to wherever he goes next; we never want the party to end. But of course, when we look, he’s gone. He’s always on his way, leaving us only hope for next weekend.
Thursday, April 3, 2008
Wednesday, April 2, 2008
STAY AWHILE
It was the stripes that fooled them, I suppose. They crept in there like it was some candy-striped kingdom. They had stories in their heads—fairytales, really—of castles made of chocolate, entire houses of gingerbread and musk sticks, lakes of sweet strawberry milk. The biggest one was only 14, the youngest just a tyke at six. Too much made of candy stripes, these days. The thick-thin bands on gobstoppers that emerge from mouths blurry and slick. The secret interior of a black suit coat. And the bright lines of a fumigation tent.
When the police found them three days later, their bodies were zipped up and whisked away before anyone could see them. In our minds, though, we knew we all thought the same thing: five children on their backs, legs in the air, fingers splayed—the exaggerated rictus of the very cockroaches the fumigation was meant to eradicate. We pictured their mad final scrambling breaths, knocking into one another, walls, and the fridge. The littlest one trying vainly to crawl under the stove.
It was all anyone could think to talk about for the entire week after it happened. They were holiday kids, come down to the Cape to watch the leaves change colour. We pictured their parents, what they were doing as their children choked into obtuse shapes. They were sipping cocktails by the lake, we knew; they were parking boxy expensive sedans across somebody’s driveway; they were laughing their loud voices, snapping their fat fingers.
We helped with the search, of course, because that was what a community did. We knocked on our neighbours’ doors, while our neighbours knocked at ours. Meanwhile, the parents held phones right to their ears for hours at a time, not trusting anything to local knowledge, calling in lawyers and investigators and emergency favours from the deep heart of the city. The Cape suffered a fresh wave of human indignity, washing over us like a sandstorm. You lose five people, we said to each other, and you gain five hundred.
Fingers pointed in various litigious ways at our councillors, at our public health system, at the fumigators. Nothing, we knew though, could really be done. Those big tents look the same, we told them, here as in the city. It was just the way of things. Had been as long as we could think. An unfortunate accident, that’s what we said to them.
The next autumn, the Cape was a sparse place. We shrugged our shoulders at each other as we passed in unusually empty streets. We plunged our hands deep into our coat pockets as we walked through the suddenly desolate parks. We smiled, sitting on the pier, sitting only exactly where we wanted to sit. The cockroaches stayed away, too, or so it seemed.
When the police found them three days later, their bodies were zipped up and whisked away before anyone could see them. In our minds, though, we knew we all thought the same thing: five children on their backs, legs in the air, fingers splayed—the exaggerated rictus of the very cockroaches the fumigation was meant to eradicate. We pictured their mad final scrambling breaths, knocking into one another, walls, and the fridge. The littlest one trying vainly to crawl under the stove.
It was all anyone could think to talk about for the entire week after it happened. They were holiday kids, come down to the Cape to watch the leaves change colour. We pictured their parents, what they were doing as their children choked into obtuse shapes. They were sipping cocktails by the lake, we knew; they were parking boxy expensive sedans across somebody’s driveway; they were laughing their loud voices, snapping their fat fingers.
We helped with the search, of course, because that was what a community did. We knocked on our neighbours’ doors, while our neighbours knocked at ours. Meanwhile, the parents held phones right to their ears for hours at a time, not trusting anything to local knowledge, calling in lawyers and investigators and emergency favours from the deep heart of the city. The Cape suffered a fresh wave of human indignity, washing over us like a sandstorm. You lose five people, we said to each other, and you gain five hundred.
Fingers pointed in various litigious ways at our councillors, at our public health system, at the fumigators. Nothing, we knew though, could really be done. Those big tents look the same, we told them, here as in the city. It was just the way of things. Had been as long as we could think. An unfortunate accident, that’s what we said to them.
The next autumn, the Cape was a sparse place. We shrugged our shoulders at each other as we passed in unusually empty streets. We plunged our hands deep into our coat pockets as we walked through the suddenly desolate parks. We smiled, sitting on the pier, sitting only exactly where we wanted to sit. The cockroaches stayed away, too, or so it seemed.
Tuesday, April 1, 2008
SO FAR
The black box was discovered only because a curious child in the area had the habit of prising up rocks to check for worms hiding underneath. The child, a young boy, turned over this particular rock on this particular day, only to find the black box, which is really more of an grey-brown, enveloped almost totally in the dirt.
He scrabbled at it with his fingers for a bit and then used his shoe to kick it loose from its tightly packed resting place before lifting it up and putting it down next to his bicycle, upon which he had ridden some five kilometres from his home and had decided, for no particular reason, to turn the handlebars and swerve off from highway just because he felt like it and consequently discovered some interesting looking rocks which, in the end, turned out not to be rocks, but rather the remnants of a chartered plane.
The black box had a green light hidden in its side panel, a blinking green light that pulsed every two seconds and which the boy noticed only after giving the black box a thorough going over, as any curious child would when confronted by an unfamiliar object. When he eventually read the tiny lettering on the underside of the box that told him that whoever found the box should ring the Aviation Authority, he pushed his fingers through his hair and whistled softly.
The boy pondered the logistics of transporting the black box home, whether he would be best to hold it under one arm and steer with the other, or whether he should attach it to the bike, or to himself, somehow with the length of chain he used as a bike lock when he parked his bike in town. When the boy picked the box up, he discovered that he couldn’t, in fact, fit it under one arm. It wasn’t just that it was too big, or too heavy. It was just that it somehow didn’t fit. Likewise, the chain he used as a bike lock was too short to fit around the box and besides he had no real way of securing the box with one piece of chain.
So the boy pushed his fingers through his hair again and made his decision. He picked up the box with both hands and carried it that way, with both arms wrapped around it, back to the side of the highway, pausing only to mark, with a set of small stones, the place where he should stop and collect his bike later on.
When the boy was inevitably asked, later on, why he didn’t just leave the black box where it was, cycle back into town and return with a parent or guardian, possibly in a car this time, the boy simply replied that he thought it wasn’t right to leave something so important sitting out there under a rock, something that so obviously was meant to be kept safe. When the boy was asked if he knew what the black box was, he just shook his head.
He scrabbled at it with his fingers for a bit and then used his shoe to kick it loose from its tightly packed resting place before lifting it up and putting it down next to his bicycle, upon which he had ridden some five kilometres from his home and had decided, for no particular reason, to turn the handlebars and swerve off from highway just because he felt like it and consequently discovered some interesting looking rocks which, in the end, turned out not to be rocks, but rather the remnants of a chartered plane.
The black box had a green light hidden in its side panel, a blinking green light that pulsed every two seconds and which the boy noticed only after giving the black box a thorough going over, as any curious child would when confronted by an unfamiliar object. When he eventually read the tiny lettering on the underside of the box that told him that whoever found the box should ring the Aviation Authority, he pushed his fingers through his hair and whistled softly.
The boy pondered the logistics of transporting the black box home, whether he would be best to hold it under one arm and steer with the other, or whether he should attach it to the bike, or to himself, somehow with the length of chain he used as a bike lock when he parked his bike in town. When the boy picked the box up, he discovered that he couldn’t, in fact, fit it under one arm. It wasn’t just that it was too big, or too heavy. It was just that it somehow didn’t fit. Likewise, the chain he used as a bike lock was too short to fit around the box and besides he had no real way of securing the box with one piece of chain.
So the boy pushed his fingers through his hair again and made his decision. He picked up the box with both hands and carried it that way, with both arms wrapped around it, back to the side of the highway, pausing only to mark, with a set of small stones, the place where he should stop and collect his bike later on.
When the boy was inevitably asked, later on, why he didn’t just leave the black box where it was, cycle back into town and return with a parent or guardian, possibly in a car this time, the boy simply replied that he thought it wasn’t right to leave something so important sitting out there under a rock, something that so obviously was meant to be kept safe. When the boy was asked if he knew what the black box was, he just shook his head.
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