adamsimon: March 2014

Madness

The fine mist of my guide's blood remained stuck in the scorching and humid African air of the Songimvelo game reserve where my frail physical form displaced his vapor, emotionally and physically unmoved, as something furry and ugly and mean cracked his ribs in its teeth like biscotti. It had been seconds since I had moved and even longer since I had noticed people were screaming. There was never an intention to write about our guide. He was never meant to be a focal point of my adventure, but now I had to mention him. Not out of respect for his passing, but to give some sort of name to the monster's food. Vuvuzela? Ubuntu? His name may have been in the email attachment for our reservation and if not, Google could offer some common South African names to lie and use as his for my article.

The monster's fur was spotted so maybe it was a leopard? My photographer was no help. Another South African named something else unpronounceable. He was gone. Typical of underpaid help. National Geographic would have bought this photograph if my own employer, Vice, declined it for its gruesomely vivid redness. I threw my hands up in frustration. This motion alerted the beast to my presence. The moment before it attacked me hung still and lent me another moment of life if only to consider how my own actions had been my undoing. I must have been so still for so long that the spotted bloody cat thing had dismissed me as a threat or a meal he needed to kill before focusing on our guide. This thought complete and the moment not yet spent, I wondered the reserve's refund policy. I threw up an arm and it sunk its teeth between my radius and ulna and twisted its head, dropping me to the ground with lightning shooting up my left side. Spotted cat thing had a circle on its forehead between its eyes the size and damage you'd expect from someone grinding a hot car cigarette lighter into furry flesh. My dirty right thumb punctured the beast's glassy left eye when its head jerked away with a splash of blood and a crack of thunder.

Fun Travel Fact:

iBandla lamaNazaretha, also called "The Shembe", is Christianity's and Zulu's offspring in Southern Africa and one of the largest religions on the contenent with over five million followers. The defining neckwear for each sect's leaders is leopard skin. It's a big church that's getting bigger and while the leopard appears on many relevant lists and is protected by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, nobody messes with the Shembe.

Repeat this style with other Fun Travel Facts.

My salvation in a church. I wasn't looking for Jesus, but luckily he was looking for leopard skin. Two men, skin as dark as a Kardashian soul, broke bush to claim their prize and found me, collapsed and bleeding from the arm. They looked at me and turned to each other and started discussing.

Their topic was not one I wanted to speculate on. Still did. Kill the witness to the poaching or let him live? Ransom him? Eat him?

They looked at me and moved past me to the leopard with knives. I crawled and scooted towards the cat's former chew toy. I started digging through our guide's soiled pockets and bloody gear for a satellite phone. No luck.

My gear and the gear stolen from discarded packs around me tested the stitching on my pack, but it was expensive equipment bought from hipsters working in outdoor-themed department stores ironicly, so it was quality stuff. The sun showed the direction of my path, unfriendly though it seemed. The two men rose up from their work. One skinned leopard for one happy leader of iBandla lamaNazaretha. Since they had decided not to kill me after deliberation, I reasoned they wouldn't suddenly change their minds if I pushed my luck.

"Levi Rucker, Vice Magazine. Thanks for saving me."

They looked at me silently, sizing me up. Their faces betrayed no emotion. Mine faked gratitude as I wound my finger around the sabretooth marks in my arm, indicating a need for a bandage.

A moment later they were gone, retreated into the forest. Chewed human to my left and skinned monster to my right. I pressed on.

I hadn't forgotten about the photographer. I assumed he was lost or dead, but I ran into him, running in the jungle, lost, but at least headed to the east like me. His path had been a panicked zig zag that left him exhausted. Still, I threatened to leave him behind and he kept pace with me.

A half mile from the Swaziland border, I kicked myself for not trying to rope the poacher in for a full interview. I consoled myself with the knowledge that they would have shot me. I realized I was rationalizing out loud to my photographer as we had walked to the Josefdal port of entry, passing a rusted and failing trailer the border guards lived in.

My South African photographer tugged at my khaki safari shirt when I started pushing my way to the front of the line since he wasn't used to working with real press, resigned as he was to the silly rag that loaned him to me. The other Africans said things, but they all sounded like "Swati swazi swazi swati" to me and they still tried to communicate in those noises after it was clear they werenot speaking my language. The armed officials checking papers took my passport and leafed through impressive credentials, stamped as they were with marks from countries representing a career of globetrotting, wherever there was an opportunity to expose my readers to the grimy underbelly of the back alleyways of Planet Earth.

A stamp from Singapore from a visit to a transgender slave market. A stamp from Afghanistan where I pretended to be an arms dealer and a little village showed me from start to finish how they craft guns by hand in under a week. A stamp from Japan where I took my readers to "cuddle cafes". A stamp from Czechoslovakia from back when it was a country. It was a long time ago, but they were selling girls into sex farms or sex houses or sex something. The dim-looking guard in the admittedly well-laundered uniform didn't smile or raise his eyebrows impressed as he was showing my press pass and passport and letter from the office of King Mswati III inviting me to extoll the virtues of Swaziland tourism to his equally dim-looking partner who was sitting at a small fold up table with a stack of papers and the rubber stamp required for entry.

"My photographer is falling behind," I said, pointing to the rear of the line where Mofongo or whatever was being meek. They didn't respond so I asked, "Do you speak English?"

The standing guard turned to me. His name tag said, "Ntombi". Spending a few seconds trying to pronounce it in my head kept me entertained while he jabbered on with the banal. Yes, he spoke English. Yes, they were calling it in. Yes, yada yada. En-tom-bi? Nit-om-bi? En-tomb-i? Maybe the T was silent. Or maybe the N. It took all too long for them to call me in and verify, but at least it gave Mofongo time to grow a pair and push passed the Africans and catch up with me.

Finally, the stamp. Thump. Allowance to leave the South African side of the line by the game reserve and enter the Swaziland side of the line. They were explaining, more to my photographer than to me, that we were entering as a pair and must leave as a pair and he was only being allowed into Swaziland because he was with yours truly. As soon as we were out of earshot, I joked about renegotiating his fee now that we were inside the hellhole since he couldn't escape without me. He didn't find it amusing. Swaziland sucks.

The Kingdom of Swaziland is a tiny ink stain of a "country" (and the quotations are appropriate as it lacks about everything that defines a nation-state). It's situated inside of South Africa, surrounded on all sides. How they've managed to exist in the 21st century is beyond me. Most people live on less than a buck twenty-five per day. Everyone's a farmer. Most farm food, the rest drugs. Highest incidence of AIDS in the world. Lowest life expectancy in the world. The dumb ones spoke siSwati, Swati, or Swazi. Same language. The names of the language are interchangeable. Or the languages themselves are interchangeable. The smart ones at least knew some English. Not that the guards who closed the gate behind us were smart. They probably had to learn enough English to interact with civilization since they were on the border. Hoping to find a car rental or scooter rental shop once the road went from ugly dirt road to ugly paved road, we pressed on. No such luck.

We walked a mile on the cracked and failing road and the hills grew larger and the grass turned from yellow to green. Ecologically, it's less of a hellhole than it is economically and Mofongo (I called him that in my head even though I knew, know, and will know that's a food. Out loud I never said a name and said, "Take a picture of those hills" but as it was only us within talking distance, I figured he wouldn't notice.) snapped pictures of the more scenic views. In the town of Belembu, we stopped and with a keen traveler's eye, I assessed my surroundings. A better choice of paint colors, some roadwork, and some blue checked window treatments and a picture of Belembu could have been mistaken for a rustic village in France where a few grape stompers put anti-freeze into the wine until my article sent them to the horrors of the French penal system.

Mofongo talked to the clerk-owner of the Belembu Lodge while my keen traveler's eye looked over... nothing. The lobby offered nothing interesting. If you have to be poor, at least be interestingly poor. This lobby was barren of interest. The walls were wooden, which made it a high class establishment, but nothing hung on them. The dirt on the bare concrete floor was not blood-stained nor infested with

"Swati swati swazi swazi."

"Swazi swati?"

"Levi Rucker, Vice Magazine. Swati."

"Swazi swazi swazi swati."

"Siswati swati?"

"Swazi."

"Swati."

I ate my murdered guide's sandwich. Cheap meat on cheap bread. No dressing or veggies or cheese. The meat's origin was a mystery, but it's non-Swazi nation of origin made it safer than the continental menu at Hotel Boredom. Should there have been a side of guilt with this? My condition precludes me from this feeling and whether it was the calcification of my amygdala brought on my disease or the logical conclusion that he wasn't going to eat it, the sandwich a guiltless, guiltfree, and sans guilt. I did not, do not, and will not feel guilt at his death nor my enjoyment of its outcome. If I rationed the supplies from my own backpack and the scavenged food from the backpack of the deceased, only two more days without eating Swazi cooking lay ahead. Three with rigorous conservation, but the bottled water wouldn't last that long.

Mofongo wouldn't leave me alone that night. The monster and the whole bloody scene had gotten to him and it was annoying. I took his hand into mine and pretended to care. I've had a lot of practice pretending to care, pretending to be interested, pretending to be in grief. People look at you strange if you don't seem sad at a funeral. Sunglasses are the key there. Doesn't work at weddings though unless they're outdoors, but faking a smile is much easier than faking grief. I gave him a Xanax and it started to work right away. He calmed down and decided it wasn't that traumatic after all and said good night. I locked the door after he left and immediately turned out the lights. I could hear him pacing less than five minutes later in his own room. Xanax takes away the feeling. It does nothing for the thoughts. Nothing more than a reassuring hand. It's a featherweight as far as sedatives go, but it's been helpful in my role as journalist, lowering the inhibitions of people guarding secrets. Works on women guarding their chastity, but it's not like I would make someone do something they didn't already want to do.

The night was sticky and hot and there was no air conditioner. Hanging mosquito netting only made it worse on myself, but Africa is covered in mosquitoes that would enjoy nothing else than my juicy American blood. Adding half a fifth of Canadian Mist to my hemoglobin brought that elusive Morpheus out of hiding. A banging in the night woke me up and I snapped my neck in the direction of the noise, the wall between my confining, sparsely furnished room and Mofongo's, which I assumed was as badly supplied with furniture. The banging was loud and if it continued much longer it would be worth my effort to un-mosquito net myself and put on my pants and talk to him. There was a crash and the clerk-owner's voice yelled something in Swati and the noise quieted, so my head fell again. They did their thing and I mine. There was some talking for a few more minutes and then silence and then heavy lids and then a dream of a hundred beautiful women at my beckoned call.

When I awoke, it was to the clerk-owner knocking at my door and informing me that my photographer had left. The check was Vice Magazine's responsibility and clerk-owner knew it, but he asked for a tip, trying to milk every lilangeni from my pockets that, admittedly, overflowed with emalangeni. But he couldn't help me find a new photographer, so he got nothing. Mofongo's mysterious and violent disappearance was especially tragic to me as I was a terrible photographer. I had a camera, but my sense of framing and composition was nowhere near magazine quality.

"Not leaving the country without me," I said to myself, packing my backpack with Mofongo's travel papers that he had left. The only other option was to leave them at the shack of a hotel with the shifty clerk-owner. His hands twitched at the sight of money and my mind could conjure no reservations in mentally accusing him of the hypothetical sale of Mofongo's papers to aid some Swazi's escape from their totalitarian regime. Better to have Mofongo's papers with me. He knew my itinerary. If he wanted them, he could catch up with me.

The clerk-owner-asshole's English dried up when the topic changed from giving him money to the subject of a refund for Mofongo's room, which I felt entitled to. He likewise stonewalled my attempts to rent anything with wheels in the squalor surrounding his establishment. So I began to walk, reminiscing about the seats of the guide's jeep that the monstrous leopard-thing destroyed. The vehicle was rendered unsteerable when the beast lept through the windshield of the moving steel, bending the steering wheel. It was turned into an unturnable mess when the teeth of its bottom jaw came up through the guide's bottom jaw and the teeth of its top jaw had pulled great gashes from the guide's forehead through his eyes and nose to meet the bottom teeth, leading to the crash that further made its driving ability a lost cause. At the time, the seats were uncomfortable, but now compared to my Timberlands boots seemed fluffier and I would trade the two to stop this forced death march. I drank my bottled water quickly, hoping to lessen the weight of my pack.

It was a calculated risk to consume my Voss and possibly fall to the mercies of the disease ridden well water that coursed beneath my feet. Piggs Peak, the next settlement, promised a full city. This filled me with little hope given what I realized of the African definition of the word "city". However, a casino is a casino is a casino and there was a Piggs Peak Hotel and Casino featured in the packet of information sent to my magazine by the Swaziland department of tourism (who I imagined to be a lone man named Zimbimbim desperately trying to bring tourists under threat of execution). Where there is casino, there is gambling, so there must be some civilization and where there is civility, there is internet access, bottled water, and white people speaking English.

It was the only thing that was going to keep me putting foot after foot on the thin, single lane road that twisted like a crooked vericose vein through tin roofed huts, punctuated with the occasional tin roofed shack. Is that considered the rich family in town? A suite awaited my tired and abused feet, maybe even a hot tub. It was too hot to actually soak, but if it was next to the pool, I could lounge in the pool and drink with my feet soaking in the hot tub. After two miles, boredom overtook me and I walked into a village. There were seven homes. No shop. No cars. I knocked on a door and a woman answered. It was a situation where I was unsure of how to react. Her melted face was by all measureables horrific. Victims of acid attacks never stop being gross. Laos. Pakistan. Vietnam. The results are nasty no matter where they meet my eye. That's the idea. Woman messes with you, you throw acid in her face and she can't marry because nobody wants her. Childish. It was breaking your toy so if you couldn't have it, nobody could have it. Acceptable behavior in a lot of countries like Swaziland where women have the same legal rights as an eight-year-old.

Still I had to weigh my options. Do I recoil in horror as this woman must be used to? That would be the normal response, but a negative, shameful experience for the woman. Besides, it would take less effort to indulge my apathy at her condition.

"Hello. Do you know where I can rent a car?"

"Swati swati?" or it was "Swazi swazi?" because her upper lip had fused to her bottom on the left side and she slurred and spit.

"Does anyone here speak English?" I shouted over her shoulder into the crowded little house full of Swazis. Six children were upon me like spiders bursting out of a egg ball chanting "English! English!" over and over.

"Do you know where I rent a car?"

Some of them pointed west, "Bulembu!", which would mean I wasted my time. Some of them pointed east, "Piggs Peak!", which didn't help me.

"Do any of you have a bicycle? BI-SI-CUL?"

"English! English!"

"Who wants to carry my backpack to Piggs Peak?"

They all cheered and I started to walk off with the children. The acid scarred woman yelled "Swati swati" into the house and another woman came out. Looking at them was a strange sight. Before and After pictures of an acid attack, obviously a sister and the mother of at least some of these children.

"They're showing me the way to Piggs Peak," I said.

"Swati swazi swazi!" she said to me and then to her children, "Swati swati!"

The children started to go inside, but a note for 100 emalangeni changed her mind. In a country where a person lives off E12 a day, E100 can change minds. And thanks to the exchange rate, it only cost me as much as a McCombo Deal. I only needed a single Swaziling to carry my bag, but they all came along. Swaziland can be a dangerous place for a kid alone with a strange man, even if I was white. It's a place where there are public-sponsered billboards every few miles warning "Are you thinking of raping a child today? Think twice of the consequences." Obviously, the consequences are little deterrent in the poor country where over half the children lose their virginity as rapers or rapees of the violent variety.

So I imagined I was as Gandalf, walking with his hobbits through the greenery of the Middle Earth of the Lower Poverty Class. And while Samwise Gamgee kept pestering me to teach him English, I explained and evaluated the differences between our childhoods to their happy ignorance, oblivious and unprepared for the onslaught of foreign language verbiose.

"Now I'm not saying that I grew up in a better home than you, in a better neighborhood, full of better appliances, filled with better food, maintained by better housekeeping staff than your pea-brained mom and her melted sister. But I'm also not saying that I didn't.

I'm not saying that I watched satellite and enjoyed indie rock while you watched snakes slither, trying to avoid your stomping feet and enjoyed, well, rocks. I'm not saying I had a fat phase and you had a my-parents-had-another-kid-because-I-was-probably-going-to-die phase. I'm not saying that while your first sexual experience will be a rough teenager bending you over and making your anus bleed, I corn-holed the most adorable vixens trying to get back at their daddies. But I'm also not saying that I didn't.

I'm not saying that my dad used the money he saved by not donating to charities that would feed your family and have saved the lives of how ever many of your family and neighbors to buy me a car that I went and wrecked while high two weeks later, driving hands at the positions of ten o clock and slick snatch. I'm also not saying I didn't."

They understood every fourth word it seemed and I knelt down and pinched Mofongo II's cheek (I felt it was a fitting tribute to name her after my disappeared photographer, despite the gender mismatch) and I told her, "Oh, who am I kidding? I AM saying all of these things. But c'mon, sweetie! You can see it in my eyes. I'm better than you. My smug look clearly shows that no individual has EVER questioned my abilities or merit or the possibilities for my future. It was all chance, I understand. I've had certain opportunities that you, in your well water, impoverished, for the price of a cup of a coffee you can save the life of this child life will never understand. So when I walked into your house like I owned it, saw the gooey, frozen, and unresponsive face of your family members, I knew it was my God-given right as an American to buy your entire sub-human family for less than a car wash without an ounce of negotiation needed. And I did."

I stood up and continued my trek down the dirty road in my Timberlands.

"Every bit of dust you kick with your bare feet while carrying my $500 backpack is a reminder that while I will wrap up experiencing this 'adventure' that you call your 'life', I will fly, first class, to my $3000 studio in an old industrial district solely because it's hip and trendy while maintaining a car, ordering food, and bar hopping every day. You, on the other hand, will say poor. Ahaha... loser."

I assumed the uneducated wretches had never read the classics and continued to borrow from Bret Easton Ellis.

"Oh yeah, remember how your dad was killed by civil unrest or the oppressive regime of your totalitarian dictator? Well, your mom sold you all so quick, I'm betting she's hurting for stiff American money and I'm looking to use my unearned wealth. When I'm riding in my rental, hopefully a closed top so I can ignore your poverty more, I might stop by. How much do you think your mom charges for an around-the-world? Just kidding, of course. Your mom probably has AIDS and will die in a year."

The smiles on their faces throughout this horribly offensive expression of the English language had fueled me on to make it more offensive, waiting for the moment when they would gather I was insulting them, but the moment never came. The whole lot of words was in a sing-song voice and they might have thought I was espousing on the designated hitter rule's impact on the game. When stuck on the road, it's important to entertain yourself with little games to pass the time, but the sound of a car behind us interrupted more of my inane self-aggrandizing.

"And I'm a ninja. Make that king of the ninjas. With a couple wives. Not all at once. Some were ninja wives."

The car's engine was deep and low and impressive, making me stop in my tracks to admire the sound, not only to try to hitch a ride behind it's air conditioning unit. The cloud of dust with the flat and low metal shark that helmed the dirt storm rumbled quickly towards me. The hobbits had already moved to the side. They knew the shark, painted purple, and respected its power, understanding that at least. It drove as if no man or child would possibly slow its travel and the shark would consume all pedestrians or lesser vehicles without slowing to taste them. A roving beacon of roaring testosterone. I moved to the side of the road and jutted out my thumb, but the Swazilings grabbed my arm and pulled it down, repeating and yelling "No" at different volumes. Loud enough to impart the urgency, hush enough that the shark wouldn't hear them.

The shark slowed and my hobbits abandoned Gandalf the White, dropping my pack, as they scattered. The shark stopped in front of me and the dust cloud overtook it and me, sending me into a coughing fit as the tinted window lowered with a whir. I couldn't see through the dust into the darkness of the tinted car, but I coughed out something resembling, "How about a lift to Piggs Peak Casino?" and the window whirred up. I thought I was out of luck and was about to rap on the window with my knuckles and give the driver some good old fashioned "How dare you? Do you know who I am?" when I heard the cha-chunk of the door lock. I grabbed my bag and opened the door, but a voice from the darkness stopped me. It was a wildly deep bass of a voice, the kind of exaggerated manliness that came with bad impressions of Barry White.

"Put da bag in da trunk, not in da lab."

I didn't understand what "da lab" was, but I figured "da trunk" when it popped open. I walked to the rear of the four door and hefted up my sack, taking a moment to appreciate the contents of the trunk. A box of guns, suspicious worn plastic containers with mystery liquids still settling from the stop, two gallon size ziplocs of marijuana, a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of beer, a pint of raw ether, chemistry textbooks, three machetes and suits in dry cleaner bags, folded over with care. This was a man to treat with respect and I laid my pack down as carefully as possible, trying not to disturb the contents of this hell on wheels.

I returned to the front passenger side door and sat down in the seat, ass first, with my feet out the side and clapped them together, knocking off dirt and hoping my host would appreciate the gesture to keep his car clean and to keep the Swaziland on the outside of the shark. Then I turned and shut the door.

"Thanks for picking me up. My name's Levi Rucker. I'm a magazine writer from America."

I turned and shook the hand of my host. He grabbed and squeezed, threatening to break my fingers, eager to establish dominance.

"Lindiwe Dyuba."

This was a man whose name you learned and remembered.

Madness

Before I could ever register the face of Lindiwe Dyuba, my eyes had to adjust to inside of the car. The kind of music you curse under your breath when it vibrates up next to you at a stop light was coming from oversized console speakers. Once my pupils widened and adjusted to the heavy tinting on the windows, my ocular nerves were assaulted in every way possible. A stinging mix of chemicals, hanging in the air, emanating from the backseat where test tubes and beakers clinked together, suspended by metal ring stands and test tube pincers tied with twine, seemed to be responsible for the smell of chlorine and vaporized ginger root. Pushing past the pain landed my brain in a visual assault of hyperbolic colors, equally from a chemistry set. The interior of the car was lime green. All of it. Neon lime green. It seemed to glow. The seats and the dashboard and the steering wheel and the upholstery on the roof. Holding onto my hand was a wave of bubblegum pink in the form of a three piece suit with an orange vest, pin stripe white-and-pink shirt, and a tie made out of the "laser" background in middle school class photos. His shoes were shined and while red leather was ostentatious in most places, it seemed to bring the whole outfit down a notch. A pink bowler hat sat between us. It took a conscious effort to see my host himself through all the noise he had surrounded himself with.

Lindiwe Dyuba was unlike anyone I had ever encountered in my travels. He was clearly a Swazi, but it was impossible to pinpoint what gave this impression. His features had not been shaped by hardship, but were soft and gentle. He had a closely shaved and extremely well groomed goatee that trailed into a jawline of hair that connected up his sideburns, which were no thicker than a pencil. His eyes were hidden behind lime green sunglasses, studded with rhinestones, but as he moved his eyes would peek out from behind the glasses for a moment and quickly transmit a message. He could make me disappear quickly and with no questions asked.

Fun Travel Fact:

La Societe des Ambianceurs et des Personnes Elegantes was, is, and will be a coalition of Africans enacting a form of civil disobedience of dressing smartly. Tyrants and rulers in African slam their fists down and decry the horrors of Western society and how Africa was chained by their colonialism and call for a break from all Western culture, erasing the shirt and tie in favor of gowns colored up to look like Bob Marley posters in a freshman's dorm room. It's an attempt to unify the Africans by painting Western civilization as the boogeyman and to look a little less goofy. Less Wester clothing means less shirts on their people congratulating the wrong champions of the previous year's world series.

Adherents of La SAPE dress in sharp Western clothing, bright and obvious, a big fluorescent "fuck you" to the authorities that want them to wear grass and mud and call it traditional. Lindiwe Dyuba was a sapeur, a loud and proud man of this movement calling for the modernization of African culture.

"What da yo wanna ta go ta Piggs Peak fo? Icon turn aroun an av yo at da borda in atwenny."

"Well, Lindiwe..."

"LINdiwe," he shouted, correcting my pronunciation with a hard punch in my shoulder.

"LINdiwe," I said. "I have been allowed access to your beautiful country to promote its tourism and the casino is a good place to start."

The same bullshit talk you have with everyone you first meet. Lindiwe said I should make for the border. I agreed, but I was still there to do the job and I related my woes to missing a photographer.

"Icon take da pictchas, ma frien. Ido da photos fo da game reserve so Icon see if da men wit da money want ma pills and grass and such."

He jerked a thumb to the backseat's chemistry set as he drove. Shrugging was the limit of my conviction. It worked for me. I couldn't take pictures to save my life. No head for composition or lighting.

The Swazi and bonded with me over sports. His accent got on my nerves, but he knew his stuff. It was all read or watched though. He had never been to real game. People who can't access something they want to dive into the minutae of data available to fool themselves that they are complete.

"Headin fo da borda afta da casino?" he said.

No, god damn it, you idiot. I'm not heading for the border.

"No. A few more stops. All the highlights of Swaziland. Mbabane, Manzini, some more game reserves, some national parks. I'm going to show off all the greatness of Swaziland," I said.

It was all a lie. Vice Magazine didn't print positive things, but this time I wasn't even here for the standard "look how stupid and evil and depraved these people are" piece. It was something bigger than that. If it worked out, could propel me into some serious news. National Geographic money, guest slots on the Colbert Report. The Big Time.

The Piggs Peak Casino was an oasis of garish stupidity in a country of impoverished stupidity. A slice of off-strip Vegas in the middle of rolling hills of goat munched greenery. As we pulled up, Lindiwe alerted me to the obvious.

"Ya sha know, Levi, I's no sactly on da strict an legal terms wit da gov'ment, so be needin yo photographa's name an da papers tha go wit it ta check in."

Handing Lindiwe the papers yielded a surprise when he read them aloud, "James."

I snatched the papers and confirmed it for myself, "James. Well, I was way off." To be honest, I preferred Mofongo.

Waiting at the doors of Piggs, the help fell all over themselves to get some white man money, but they left empty handed while Lindiwe parked his rolling lab, rightfully wary of letting valets drive his volatile livelihood. Inside, I introduced us to the front desk clerk and handed over our papers.

"I have a reservation for Levi Rucker and, uh, James."

The clerk clackity clacked on his keyboard and I filled the awkward silence at random intervals.

"Should be there."

Click clack.

"I'm on the list."

Clack click.

"Free lunch."

A hotel staff member started to talk to Lindiwe and said, "Swati swazi?"

To which he replied, "Swati swazi?"

Clickity clickity clack clack click.

"Swazi swati."

"Tourism gig."

"Swati swati swati."

Click. Dramatic pause. Click again.

"Swati?"

"Total coverage."

"Siswazi."

I grew impatienty-plack at the clackity-clack, the swazi swati, and the swazi swat, all alone in a room full of people, gripping the counter with white knuckles, getting louder and louder.

"What's the score here?!"

Just clack. Just clack clack clack clack clack!

"What. Is. Next?"

A manager came and whispered something in the clerk's ear, stopping all clacking and clicking and swati-ing and swazi-ing. The staff member with Lindiwe was gone. Lindiwe's was likewise Houdini. When my head resumed attention to my clerk, there was an envelope at the end of an outstretched hand, missiling towards my face. I snapped it out of his finger tips and flipped it in my hand, examining it.

"Your suite isn't ready yet," he said in a light British accent. "But someone was looking for you."

A closed lipped muttering of "I haven't done anything yet" to no one in particular came out subconsciously.

The clerk looked at me when I looked at him, then looked over my shoulder at the line that had formed behind me. The whole time I had been waiting on him he had taken his time, but now he wanted me to hurry. No dice.

"So can you recommend a restaurant? How about a show? Should I try the slots or the tables?"

I pestered him a few minutes until it wasn't fun anymore and left in search of Lindiwe. The expedition through the ragged, dirty carpet of the Piggs Peak Casino in search of that shining beacon of extreme colorization, a pink signal flare promising to light my path from dirt town to grass town and to dirt town again, was not immediately fruitful. The casino floor's empty chairs echoed the hollow tack-tack as I bopped every machine and table and surface with my knuckles to annoy the dealers stuck with two patrons in ragged and worn t-shirts and gowns peacocking the fact that the dealers would return to their hovels untipped and continue starving. The 1980's American arena rock coming through the tinny speakers drowned out my casual attempts at annoyance, but the attack continued anyway. This was the most depressing casino I had ever stepped foot in. Including the Korean DMZ.

The pink pilot of the shark was at the bar and explained in his shattered, broken, and wounded English his wanted status kept him away from well-videoed areas.

"What are you wanted for?" I asked, popping a dried soybean in my mouth and washing it down with a gulp of Carling Black Label. The South African Brewing company produces an enormous amount of beer, second in the world only to Anheuser-Busch. Knowing this and other fun facts were essential when creating a cover story on tourism taht could withstand scrutiny.

"Iza lon tory. Le's getcha yo pictchas an ge yo ba ta da borda."

Shaking my head slowly, hoping he would get the idea, the worlds crawled out of my mouth one at a time and spilled onto the carpet where they sat and pooled, "Told you. I'm seeing the whole country. Special assignment. So tell me the story."

While Lindiwe bored me, the border drifted into my mind. Bacon. Video games. Freeways.

"... so I let ma post. Couln't de wit da evil tings de wanna me ta..."

Malls. Drive-thru. Girls that weren't riddled with disease.

"... try ta lea da counry. S'when I foun ow bout da warran fo treason an..."

Screens on the windows to keep out mosquitoes. The fact that there are no mosquitoes. No soccer.

"Petty treason or high treason?" I asked.

"What?"

"Are you wanted for petty treason or high treason?"

"Idon know," he said.

"Petty, I bet," I said. "Leaving your post is petty treason. Selling out your country is more high treason. Petty treason shouldn't be a problem. We'll say you're with me."

Lindiwe's eyes lit up and his English improved, "You'll help me across the border?"

"Naturally. It's my burden as a white man to help you lot from time to time and we'll call it your payment for taking photos. Now start taking photos while I write."

The drug dealing sapeur lept off his bar stool and embraced me with a warmth unfelt since arriving on this continent. The appeal of leaving Swaziland was understandable and familiar, but not the strange softness to his embrace or the arousal I felt from it.

He took photos as I drank and watched the wretched gamble. What was the purpose of these people? Were they hoping to hit it big? And then what? I wanted to ask them. I wanted to shout in their faces, "Even if you win all the money in Swaziland, you're still stuck in FUCKING Swaziland!"

The truth was these people were put on Earth for our benefit, the benefit of normal people, born in civilized countries with a certain level of wealth when compared to the starving third world. Acknowledging that all of that was the roll of cosmic dice is the first step to appreciating it. Then, once you can appreciate it, you can use that knowledge. These people exist in their horrid squalor and shattered hopes so when you're in a thirty dollar a night motel room with a forty dollar a night girl, strung out speedballing heroin and coke, and you've cum so hard there were bone chips in it, you can look red-eyed out the window naked at 4:45 AM with the traffic light changing colors and illuminating your dick from yellow to red and you can see your transparent reflection in the window, look yourself in the eyes and be happy when they appear on a late night television charity commercial with a Sarah McLachlan soundtrack, telling yourself, "At least I'm not them."

Early seventies American rock was playing as we retreated to my two bedroom suite and ordered room service. Limes for the tequila, which they didn't have, so they brought grapefruits. How they thought it was acceptable exchange is beyond my vapid comprehension of the Swazi mind.

"Swazi swati," said Lindiwe to the bellhop.

"Swazi swazi," came the return and the door was shut.

Lindiwe's attitude had taken a turn since our hug. Gentler and happier. His speech pattern changed, but it wasn't worth bringing up, risking confrontation so early in our adventure.

"Lindiwe, what is it?"

"It's the room service. Carrots."

"Carrots?"

He nodded and removed some raw carrots from a plate, taking them over to his briefcase.

"Levi, did you know that the stuff in LCD televisions is chemically similar to carrot juice?"

"I did not," I said and took another hit from Lindiwe's glass bong on the table.

"Raw carrot is also," he said as removed three plugged vials from his suitcase, "a cheap and effective way to extend the effects of a tiny amount of benzodiazepine.”

He was a whir of scalpel and latex gloves, dissecting the carrots to their inner roots and shredding those.

"Don't last long," he continued. "An hour, maybe. But it does the job and ain't addictive as that coke."

I waved my hand. "I don't do coke anymore unless it's a special occasion. Wednesdays are special. Tuesdays, too."

Maybe the grass or the liquor had dulled my judgments. Maybe it was the ease with which Lindiwe was exposing his criminal activities to me. Maybe I had felt guilty about drugging him, but I dismissed my earlier reservations.

"You know, Lindiwe, you're, ah, speech pattern has changed. You don't have as much of an accent anymore."

Lindiwe's face contorted. "I don kno wat yo talkin bout?" The question mark was loaded with a message of "Can we pretend I've been talking this way the whole time?" I laughed that nonsense off. He tried to explain, "It's, that, ah..."

"I don't care about why you did it. And I have to apologize, Lindiwe. It's my fault that you dropped it. It's that hug from earlier."

"Sorry about that, Levi. It was unprofessional."

"Yeah, well, when you hugged me, I dropped some Xanax in your drink."

"You what?"

"Yeah. As far as sedatives go, it's shit. And it was a shit thing to do. But in my defense I’m fucked up in my brain. Got a disease that messes with my emotions, left me with dry skin and this raspy voice. Sometimes I do stupid, paranoid, or general fuck around things."

"Lipoid proteinosis?"

"Yeah, where'd you learn that?"

He shrugged.

"University. I was a very good student, especially when it came to the brain."

I started pawing through the assortment of pills that Lindiwe had spread out on the coffee table for us to play with tonight with my left hand while I poured tequila into my Piggs Peak Casino shot glass. I had ten more already stolen away in my suitcase.

Lindiwe popped a few amphetamines. To counter any residual effects of the Xanax, he explained. I understood. A man needs his secrets. Lindiwe Dyuba had secrets, but secrets have a way of spilling out in good company with good drugs and good liquor and a room service bill that will go to your boss no matter what you order. This stream of consciousness flowed both ways freely between us. There was a television in the room, but we only ever touched the radio, finding little in the way of music and settling for the "swati swati swati" of talk radio turned low while we spoke and smoked and ate grapefruits.

"You haven't seen any real shit."

"The hell I haven't. I've witnessed connections so slow it could hardly be said to be internet at all."

Time wore on and the thin orange curtains of the room played tricks with our eyes as the sun set.

"You have to give a little to get a little."

"What did you give him?"

"I gave him his fingernails back."

He introduced me to chemical concoctions I had never even heard of before.

"This pill will make you hear voices."

"What do the voices tell you?"

"Don't murder that guy. Consider the consequences."

"Pass."

When night fell, we injected into the Molly into our veins and hit the bar again, doing shots and sucking on limes. Their green tartness plentiful at the bar and irreplaceable by other citrus.

"You drink that drink right now god damn it or I will bring down the FURY!"

"Blah blah blah, I'm a big scary man, blah blah blah."

I pointed to the slot machines and the lone Swazi feeding three at a time.

"God is in the machine, Lindiwe, and He resides as snugly in the circuit board or the gears of your shark as He does in a summer's dawn or a newborn's laugh. You think otherwise and you look down upon God and he is a wrathful motherfucker who doesn't forget that shit."

The topic of women and men and sexuality arose and it was treading uneasy waters with Lindiwe.

"Yeah, a woman with a good personality. A good personality means she works out and she'll do all the freaky stuff I want to do in bed while pretending she's innocent out of bed."

Gender discussion made him uneasy and as a journalist, and a prick, I pressed the issue.

"When do you think a boy becomes a man, Lindiwe?" I asked as I cracked another khat under my nose and snorted.

Lindiwe paused and rolled his eyes and tried to ignore me and then made a motion with his hands to show the futility of the effort, "I don't know."

"When do you feel you became a man, Lindiwe?"

"Sex."

"That's a lie. That's a trap for men. Makes it so that we need women to become men. And it's not a job or moving out or standing up for the downtrodden or anything else except the biological thing: Puberty. Everything else is a trick to make a man act against his best interests."

"I'm going outside to smoke," he said as he arose.

"But you can smoke in here," I said, falling off my stool as I turned to stop him.

That night I discovered why the person called the man called Lindiwe Dyuba had these gender issues.

I exited hotel prime, stumbling and impaired, looking for Lindiwe. Maybe it was to apologize, but whether I could articulate that fabrication in this climate had yet to be seen. The air was sticky, but less than it was in the day. I crushed the cherry on my joint out, burning my fingertips, and put it in an empty pill bottle in my pocket for safe keeping. I took out a cigarette and started the arduous task of lighting it as the wind rolled over the hills and raised my shoulders into a hunch to shield my promised cherry from it.

"Swati swazi swazi?"

I blinked my eyes and raised my eyebrows, trying to focus, stumbling.

"Swazi swazi swazi."

Three shapes, three people, standing in the darkness.

"Piss off. I'm a somebody," I barked and returned to the task at hand.

"Swati swati."

"Whatever," I laughed, giving up. I looked once more for lost Lindiwe and started towards the door when a Swazi grabbed me by the shoulder and yanked me, spinning me to see them in the light from the door's window, though that little good. Their faces mirrored each other. Maybe they were the same person.

"Maybe I was seeing triple," I said, releasing I had been speaking out loud.

They/He started rifling through my pockets despite my confused and broken protests. They/He threw me to the ground after taking whatever I had in my pants. The pill bottle with the joint. Half a pack of cigarettes. My room key. A MasterCard. A tiny baggie of khat.

I tried to rise to my feet and explain, "Hey, you have to return those immediately to my possession. I am a guest of King Mswati the Third on a diplomatic mission to Alderaan."

The door slammed open and in the frame stood a pink nightmare with maybe a clip loaded nine millimeter, thought it may have been a revolver for my inability to focus. Lindiwe swooped his arm up, leveling it at the Swazi's head. Yes, my attacker was now a lone teen. A Swazi man-child, shaking and pissing himself as death loomed before him.

"Step away from the man with the money," the pink nightmare said, adding, "Please don't make me kill you."

The English might have been for my benefit, but my attacker understood enough to drop my belongings and take off running.

"Ferris Bueller, you're my hero," I whined out, wined out of my head.

Lindiwe laughed and fell to a knee. His laugh was soft and high pitched and his shoulders fell. The gun made its way home inside his bubblegum jacket and he helped me gather the dropped booty. Between the two of us, we checked four times to make sure we hadn't somehow forgot any of the five items, worried that in our altered states we'd find ourselves locked out of our suite or without any of my credit cards, espousing random jibberish to management instead of our needs in a professional manner.

He tucked his shoulder into my armpit and raised me up and we balanced against each other and made our way through the casino floor to the elevator, laughing at stupid jokes and our own inability to walk a straight line as we crashed into ashcans and kicked potted plants because we imagined they insulted us.

"Hey! Hey! You have kids?" Lindiwe asked me when we reached our door and started fumbling with our keys.

"No. You?"

"Kids are a real pain," he said. His voice was soft and hushed, as if telling a dirty joke. "I tell you. My daughter won't stop crying and screaming in the middle of the night."

He unlocked the door and started to strip off his jacket and tossed his hat in the corner. He was confused and disoriented and walked into my room.

"I visited her grave and asked her to stop but it doesn't help."

There was a silence between us then Lindiwe burst out laughing and threw himself backwards on my bed. I lost my breath I laughed so hard. What an awful joke, I thought. A terrible, awful, wonderful joke.

I grabbed a couple wax paper packets of illy and plopped down onto the mattress, perpendicular to Lindiwe. I insufflated the hell out of that angel dust. Lindiwe took the other packet when I offered and did the same. Good PCP will last all night and triple your strength and recklessness. Lindiwe and I broke the bed that night and dented the walls. We passed a bottle of something clear back and forth until Lindiwe made the first move, rolling over to see me face to face and smiling that soft smile of his. We were looking into each other's eyes, but his pupils were as I assumed mine to be. Glassy. Unfocused. Flicking up and down.

My attraction to Lindiwe had begun as a respect. This man had carved out a niche of supremacy in a spitball of a country. He had been born out of favor with fortune and still found a way to triumph, sending his enemies running in fear of him, even if the military wanted his head for treason.

While I had noticed the softness in Lindiwe's features and manners at times during the car ride, it wasn't until the spontaneous embrace at the bar that the supple curves of his body had bored their way into my thoughts. He leaned his face down to mine and closed his eyes as he kissed me with closed lips at first. His breath tasted of ashtrays and tequila as did mine. He kissed me harder and with a groaning of metal, the first spring of the bed gave way. He lifted his head and laughed, soft and high, pleased with himself, before coming down on my face again for another kiss, this time running his left hand over my chest as he did so. His touch was light, not the touch you'd expect from a man with a gun in his jacket pocket.

I reached to Lindiwe's waist and unbuttoned his shirt from the bottom, button by button, revealing his smooth stomach, but he rolled on top of me and smashed my hand between our empowered bodies. Lowering himself, he grabbed the waistband of my pants and caught my eye line, a wicked smile on his lips, and he pulled down on my waist band, snapping my belt and ripping my pants down the fly through the inseam.

He rubbed his cheek on my cock through my briefs and moaned in appreciation as it responded to his attentions. He pulled my briefs off with his right hand and threw them over his shoulder, catching my throttle with his left and giggling girlishly at me before moving his lips to my tip and starting work on me. I tilted my head and my eyes rolled back.

I wish I could say Lindiwe knew what he was doing below the belt. It wasn’t just a bad blowjob. It’s like he had no idea what a penis was or how it worked. I had never kissed a guy, let alone gotten head from one, but I was chemically in no condition that I had been before. Lindiwe finish his appetizer and climbed on top of me, straddling me at the waist and I resumed unbuttoning his shirt. He stopped me and took my hand and kissed it and smiled again and pulled his shirt off into two pieces and a button hit the window hard enough to make me whip my neck around in paranoia that someone else was here. He put a hand to my cheek and turned me back. Lindiwe's chest was tightly bound in elastic bandages and he leaned down and kissed me again. His right hand trailed down the side of my body and up his thigh, yanking off his own pants with angel dust might. Unbeknownst to me at the time, but he had torn off his underwear in the same motion. The next day they would be a pink lacy shred of fabric on the table lamp.

I grabbed Lindiwe and rolled him over, intent to return the favor. Pulling him down to the edge of the bed, I fell on my knees and gave him head while jerking myself off. In the time I was licking and sucking his pussy, he came twice and I spread his tight, hot cunt with my fingers to push my tongue farther with enough force to push the bed so I have to scoot on my knees to keep my nose in contact with his clit. I'm so far gone at this point, I even forget the condom and stand up, taking his legs up with me and putting his heels on my shoulders, sliding into him and powering down, first rubbing his tits through the bandages, then tearing the bandages off to access the goods while he moaned and scream and we destroyed the bedroom, the suite, and maybe even the structural integrity of the casino with our drug-crazed slam-fucking.

adamsimon

First two chapters of Madness; 3rd revision

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