Madness
2
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 irreplacable 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 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 my the burn 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, there 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. 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.
