Durban Poison

by Ben Trovato

  Over the page, the magazine gives voice to a question that crosses my mind every morning. “How can I give my cereal a nutritional boost?” Noakes might suggest you mix a packet of bacon into it and put it through a sieve. Then give the cereal to the dog, wrap the bacon around a block of cheese and eat it between two slices of steak. Have a sack of offal for dessert. You’ll lose weight in no time at all.

  Someone called Jamie Chung says, “There’s nothing worse than a cute guy with really bad breath.” I may be wrong, but I think if you’re a cute guy with really bad breath and you’re about to behead someone on the grounds that he’s a Christian, then it’s probably worse.

  A section called “guy food” tells me how I can punch up my brunch. No mention of magic mushrooms or hash browns made from real hashish. To their credit, they do provide instructions on how to make a proper Bloody Mary, which is nothing like the half a glass of tequila topped up with warm tomato juice I’ve been drinking all these years.

  There’s a page on gardening. If you have a snail and slug problem, you’re advised to open a few cans of beer and sink them into the garden. Gastropods apparently love beer. “And when they go for a sip, they’ll slip in and drown.” Yeah! We don’t need no beer, let the motherfuckers drown! Drown, motherfuckers, drown! What a waste of beer. Wouldn’t tiny landmines be a better idea?

  There’s an advert for a pill that promises to protect my entire gastrointestinal tract. Against what? If it doesn’t protect me against bullets and knives, I’m not interested. Furthermore, I do not wish to be reminded that something as vulgar as a gastrointestinal tract lurks within my temple.

  Right. I’ve reached page 90-something and it’s turning serious. “Get shredded! Fast!” Growing up, when my buddies and I decided to get shredded, the day wouldn’t end with us joshing in the gym showers and flicking towels at one another’s bare bottoms. It would end in hospital. Or the police cells. Or face down between a pair of obliging thighs.

  Now, if you want to get shredded, you apparently have to do deeply unnatural acts like the barbell squat, the bench press and the box jump. The “instructor” for this section is Leigh Halfpenny. A bit of a girl’s name, if you ask me. He plays rugby for a living. He’s not doing this because he thinks a hot bod will help him pick up chicks. He’s doing it because if he doesn’t have a tackle-smashing torso, he may well end up in a wheelchair because a Maori madman took a chunk out of his fourth vertebra. Us normal blokes? We just want to be fit enough to have sex without risking cardiac arrest.

  Page 102 and there’s no better way to measure your athleticism than to put it to the plyometric test. See what’s happening here? They’re starting to use words of four or five syllables. You’ve done your squats and flapjacks. Blood is coursing through your veins. You’re feeling smarter. Hell, yeah. I passed my goddamn plyometric test. Bring it on.

  Terrible things can happen in gyms. Personal trainer Tara Gadre has her own horror story.

  “I was in my local gym on the weekend and a guy started chatting to me while I was on an incline leg press in the middle of a set!” I only hope security got there quickly and broke his arms before he could break Tara’s concentration.

  There’s a whole page devoted to the sit-up. Inexplicably, they make no mention of alcohol. Many men will recognise the words, “Why don’t you sit up?” and “Just try to sit up” and “If you don’t sit up, I’m leaving you here.”

  And there’s a picture of a grinning muscle man selling an “efficient amino acid delivery system”. I will probably go to my grave never knowing what an amino acid is or does. Don’t get me wrong. Me and acid, we go back. But I’d rather not end up in a bar next to Rictus Ronnie with him thinking amino and me talking lysergic.

  As I neared the end of the magazine, a headline barked, “Who’s making you fat?” I didn’t even have to read the article. There are only two possibilities. It’s either the woman who cooks supper every night and giant fried breakfasts every weekend, or it’s the ANC.

  WELCOME TO THE FALLOPIAN TUBE – MIND THE GAP

  It would be beneficial for all concerned if women read men’s magazines and men read women’s magazines. We need to understand what the other gender is thinking. Get a handle on their needs. Their dreams. Their desires. Only then will we stop fighting and co-exist in blissful silence.

  So I went out and bought a copy of Women’s Health. Standing in the queue, people glanced into my basket. I do it to their baskets, but I don’t judge them like they judged me. I could see their eyes labelling me. Pervert. Weirdo. Intersex.

  It didn’t help that the cover shrieked, “Best. Butt. Ever.” Did the people around me seriously believe that I wanted to sculpt an A-list booty in just four moves? I thought I saw a man side-eyeing my bum. I gave him a look that under normal circumstances would have been a death stare, but now came across as a coy come-on. I could feel it. My inner woman was being unleashed and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it.

  I hurried to my car, painfully aware that my hips weren’t behaving as they usually do, and raced off to a beachfront bar to regroup. The cover featured a naked black woman. Given the racism that is rampant in women’s magazines, I assumed she was a white model who had been Photoshopped. These are freaky times we live in.

  The cover also promised the advice of a Love Coach. “Stay single or settle? You decide.” That’s the first six-word feature story I’ve ever seen. Rock solid advice, too. You decide. Brilliant. That’s what I call empowerment. Nothing more to be said.

  The cover also asks if I could fit into my mother’s wedding dress. It gives no answer. It’s almost Zen-like, so deep are the layers of hidden meaning. Women who have been married for a certain length of time cannot look upon their wedding dresses without laughing or crying. And rarely do they pass them on to their daughters for fear that they, too, will be cursed.

  Back home, I got into bed and opened the magazine. The first thing I saw was two girls in Levi jeans. So far so good, even though they did seem to be enjoying themselves without men.

  I skipped ahead to the Ask Women’s Health page. The question of the month was, “Is it okay to work out three days in a row to get in my weekly exercise?” The writer would have it that it depends on the type of exercise you’re doing. I would say it depends on other things. If you’re single, sure. Work out 50 hours a week, if you like. But if you have a boyfriend or husband (or a partner who is gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender) then working out three days in a row is not going to work out. Meals will go uncooked, egos will be neglected and genitalia will feel unloved.

  Page 19 reveals that stressed women are 29 per cent less likely to fall pregnant. One of the reasons women are stressed is that they know men are buying Women’s Health magazine to find out stuff like this.

  I was astounded to discover a whole page devoted to sex. I thought there’d be a paragraph at most. Exercise apparently helps fight the libido-killing effects of antidepressants. What if you’re taking antidepressants because the idea of having sex with your husband is what’s depressing you?

  A study found that women on “mood uppers” who did a 20-minute workout had double the genital arousal than when they hadn’t exercised at all. So there it is, guys. The secret is to pump ’em full of Zoloft, Prozac or Cymbalta and make ’em do a hundred push ups. You’ll have to beat them off with a club after that.

  I discover that only 10 per cent of women know the best time to conceive each month. Seriously? Are they being raised by wolves?

  “The sperm need to be inside the fallopian tubes before the egg is released.” The only comparatively serious thing men need to know is, “You have to be inside the pub before last round is called.”

  I can see how it might lead to arguments among couples trying for a child.

  “Released your egg yet?”

  “How do I know if I’ve released my bloody egg? It’s not going to send me a text, is it?”

  “I’m going to the pub.”

  “Okay, fi
ne. Put your bloody sperm in my fallopian tubes. Hurry up. Then take the dog for a walk.”

  Over the page, I discover that 59 per cent of Women’s Health readers prefer shopping in warmer temperatures. The rest apparently prefer fighting their way through blizzards and ice storms. I don’t know what to say about this.

  On to The Daddy Diet. “Moms-to-be often pop prenatal folate to protect the health of their unborn babies.” I don’t know whether to celebrate or weep. What the hell is frolate? It sounds like an optional extra at a frozen yoghurt stand. “Would you like some frolate with that, sir?”

  The very next sentence reads, “Now a Canadian study has found that nearly 30 percent of mouse litters sired by a father deficient in the nutrient had birth defects.” WTF? Are we mice or men?

  “If a baby bump is your goal, tell your guy to aim for about 400mcg of the nutrient each day from the leafy greens, fruit and fortified cereals.” Listen, honey. If your guy worries about his intake of leafy greens, don’t be surprised when he runs off with your brother.

  Then, page upon page of products. Wrinkles? Try this serum freshly squeezed from the pineal gland of a Kihansi spray toad. Dead skin? Use a peel made from algae scraped from the belly of a Vietnamese coughing crab and you’ll be sloughing like a snake in no time at all. Stinky? Daub a little essence of fruit bat on your wrists and make new friends instantly. Dry hair? Rub in a cupful of oil secreted by the albino killer whale. Too white for the night? Spread on a 24-hour bronzer made from the foreskins of an isolated Ethiopian tribe. Too dark for the park? Take a long, luxurious bath filled with Tippex.

  I’d have to look like Elephant Man before turning to some of this stuff. Polyfiller would be cheaper and just as effective as L’Oreal Paris Nude Magique Blur Cream Instant Flawless Perfector. And as for the Black Pearl Prestige G-Mask Gravity Black Mud Mask (only R1 198!), well, I often wake up with a face covered in mud at no cost to anything but my liver.

  The further I read, the more I get the impression that women worry far too much about their looks. It’s your minds we care about, girls. Just kidding. Anyway. We know you’re not doing it for us.

  Fitness seems to be important for both genders. I understand the need for men to be fit because we’re forever chasing women and on the rare occasion that we catch one, we have to do all the work in bed. I don’t know why women need to maintain their fitness levels. They don’t even have to climb very far up the corporate ladder before hitting a glass ceiling and taking an early lunch. Maybe that’s why, under the section Get-Fit Tricks, they’re offered the “one-dumbbell solution”. It sounds like a starter husband and lasts about as long.

  There’s a feature about how best to protect your heart, which, quite frankly, is ridiculous since everyone knows that only one in a hundred women has a heart.

  “According to a US study, 40 percent of women rarely give their hearts a second thought.” According to a study done in my study a few seconds ago, 90 per cent of women rarely give men’s hearts a second thought. Sorry. That’s the bitter lemon in my gin talking.

  “Light tippling may drop your risk for sudden cardiac death by 30 to 40 percent.” In South Africa, light tippling constitutes three bottles of wine and two tequila shooters before wobbling into moderate tippling. Not according to Women’s Health, though. “Just keep it to one drink or fewer per day.” Nobody who was born in this country has ever had just one drink per day. And, unless my maths is worse than I thought, less than one drink per day is roughly equivalent to no drink at all. You might as well kill yourself.

  There are three pages on tea. I like tea. But I don’t trust it. My first wife was a tea addict. I’m not blaming tea for the collapse of the marriage, but something pushed her over the edge. If it comes down to tea or me, then, yes, I am blaming the tea. A double-page spread explains the transcendental complexities of the sell-by date. For the hard-of-thinking, pictures of common foods are provided together with their lifespans. Bottled gherkins, for example, are good for up to a year. Probably less if they’ve been standing with the lid off under a tree outside Tripoli. I have fished food out of dustbins after it had been tossed out by women treating the sell-by date as if it were some kind of biblical injunction. I don’t mean dustbins in the street. I’m talking about in my home. Or their home. Whatever.

  A more useful feature might have explained how a woman can tell when a man has reached his sell-by date. If he looks, smells or tastes bad, throw him away and get a fresh one.

  Then, five pages on one woman’s struggle to lose six kilos in the 14-week run-up to her wedding. You wouldn’t believe the things I have lost in the same amount of time. Cars. Jobs. Women. Six kilos? Please. I want to know what she weighs after her first year of marriage. What’s that, darlin’? I can’t make out what you’re saying when you talk with your mouth full.

  Readers are invited to learn the secret to the perfectly grilled steak. “Meat is an ideal source of muscle-building protein.” Damn straight. Nobody knows this more than the animal it’s coming off. We are told there is nothing better than meat grilled to perfection. “On the other hand, there is nothing worse than wasting money on meat that is dried out and tough.” Yes, there is. It’s buying dried out, tough meat from a butchery in Baghdad, then getting snatched by an Islamic fundamentalist and having your head cut off before you can eat it.

  Finally, on page 83, we get to sex and love. How very whimsical to link the two.

  Right away, we learn about the world’s first rotating couples’ massager.

  “They’re worn by the woman during sex …” My sphincter snapped shut. Thank you, but no. Maybe after I’ve done a stretch in C-Max. And I do mean stretch. Besides, I’m not interested in anything that comes with a difficulty rating.

  EXPOSING MY MONEY TO ANOTHER BANK IS DOWNRIGHT INDECENT

  I am good at handling money in much the same way that Oscar Pistorius is good at handling guns. But at least nobody dies as a result of my negligence. Well, I probably will, but that’s my own damn fault.

  I have only recently begun saving for a time when I will no longer be able to earn a living from writing, which, going by the way I feel at the moment, should be around next Thursday.

  If I had to retire now – not that retiring is ever an option for writers – and live for another 10 years, my savings would provide me with an income of 2.7 cents a day. By the time I reached 60, if I had been diligent about saving, this would have risen to around 19 cents a day. Not ideal.

  I had heard good things about money market accounts – that banks will give you ridiculous amounts of interest, free holidays and even send around a manager-approved harlot should your balance be of a certain disposition.

  However, none of these generous perks were on offer when I prodded my damp wad of cash across the counter. The cadaverous misanthrope on the other side sighed heavily and reached for the forms.

  “Don’t look so sad,” I said. “It’ll grow eventually.” It sounded funny using that line outside the bedroom and I stifled a giggle. No, I didn’t. Real men don’t giggle. They guffaw. It seemed the timing was wrong for a guffaw. Besides, the security guard had his eye on me. Perhaps he was gay. Perhaps he thought I was looking at him because I was gay. It’s more likely, though, that he suspected me of being one of those weird kleptos who make off with the bank’s pen when they think nobody is looking. That’s right, mister wannabe cop. I have a tiny pair of bolt cutters secreted upon my person. The moment your attention is distracted by someone who walks in wearing a crash helmet and cradling what appears to be an AK-47 beneath his overcoat, I shall slice through the chain, grab the pen and make a break for the door.

  I don’t check my balance every month because if I want to get depressed I’ll go to a bookshop. I made an exception the other day, though, and was intrigued to see that a couple of unauthorised deductions had been made. By intrigued I mean I drank heavily and kicked a hole in the bedroom door.

  Not even I can take money out of that account without giving the bank a
sworn affidavit, a DNA sample and my firstborn. The only people with that kind of power had to be working on the inside. Armed with my miniature bolt cutters, I returned to the scene of the crime.

  A receptionist with a face made of melted latex told me to take a seat on the couch, from where I watched the living cadaver repeatedly explain a very basic banking procedure to a client whose family should be jailed for allowing her out on her own. The couch was deceptively comfortable. I felt the fight drain from me. I thought of curling up and going to sleep. By the time the slack-jawed mouthbreather in tracksuit pants shuffled off, I had almost forgotten what I was there for.

  “I want to know who stole my money,” I said. The theft was described on my statement as a “unit reduction” and a “switch out”. The consultant did what all consultants do when confronted with an angry customer. He reached for a gun. No, he didn’t. He reached for the telephone, got someone else on the line and passed the buck.

  I took the receiver. Her name was Palesa and I was clearly not her first of the day. It was almost as if she were reading from a script ha ha. I understood very little of what she was saying. From what I could make out, though, Stanlib had siphoned off a section of my savings because a posse of reckless renegades had run African Bank into the ground.

  “I don’t care,” I shouted. “How the hell can you take my money without asking or even notifying me?” She remained calm and embarked upon the official explanation. She said I had been exposed to African Bank and that when they went belly-up, share points had plummeted, money markets were impacted and side pockets were created. She might as well have been speaking Mandarin.

  “So the money is in my side pocket?” I gave myself a quick pat. Nothing, apart from a condom that had been there since 1984. Turns out my money is in the bank’s side pocket. “You haven’t lost it,” Palesa said brightly.

  “So I can access it?” Er, no. Apparently it’s a bit like Schrödinger’s cash. It exists and yet doesn’t. It’s mine, but not.