Durban Poison

by Ben Trovato

  They came out gums blazing, shooting their mouths off like it was a showdown in the Wild West. Which, I suppose, it was in a way. It was like Ant-Man, the Wasp and Doctor Doom confronting Irony Man, except I’m a real superhero and their only power is to get me banned from Facebook for 24 hours. Curses. You won this time, villains. But I’ll be back.

  These good old boys, who chose to follow me on Facebook, accused me of crossing the line. I had no idea there was only one line. And it applies to everyone? I wonder if this ever happened to the divine avatars who attracted disciples. For instance, we know about Judas Escargot, but did Peter, John, Simon the Zealot and the other dudes ever take Jesus for a beer and tell him he’s gone a bit too far?

  “Listen, J. That business today with the moneylenders? We think you crossed the line, there.”

  “What the hell are you talking about, James the Lesser? What line is this of which you speak?”

  The owner of the tavern might have announced drinks on the house at this point because there was a bit of confusion the following morning and nobody could remember who said what.

  “Matthew said something about a line.”

  “Who’s Matthew?”

  “Guy with the beard.”

  “We’ve all got beards.”

  “Isn’t his name Levi?”

  “Point is, there’s a line.”

  “Where do we put it?”

  “In the Bible, idiot.”

  “Also Facebook,” said Paul the Seer, who wasn’t a disciple but the lads liked having him around because he could predict the results in the Galilee Handicap.

  And so the line was handed down from generation to generation. Everyone understood it was a line that nobody should cross. Obviously it no longer applies to moneylenders because the only line they recognise is the red line they draw around suburbs too poor to qualify for home loans.

  In my case – when you are reported to Facebook it is registered as a case – the line has to do with humour. You need to stay on one side of it at all times. This makes sense. If you think of humour as a six-lane freeway, you need to stay in your lane or risk causing an accident. This makes no sense at all. An accident on the crowded highway of humour leaves no casualties in its wake. There are no bodies. No injuries. Just someone standing on the side of the road complaining that his feelings have been hurt.

  Even though the content is free and I never asked you to be my friend, your hurt feelings apparently trump my right to be on Facebook. Fortunately, my crime only warranted the removal of the offensive piece of filth and a 24-hour ban. The dark overlords who rule this electronic megalopolis warned that a subsequent offence would get me banned for three days. And if it happened again, well, they didn’t say. But the threat was implicit. Cyborgs would be given my digital scent. They would hunt me down and chew my fingers off. And if I persisted with voice-activated software, bionic otters would be sent across the ocean to bite off my tongue and suck out my eyeballs while I slept.

  The truth is, I’m in an abusive relationship with Facebook and it shouldn’t come as a surprise to be treated shoddily. I don’t know how many others have been banned for writing something that someone didn’t find funny. It could be millions. Real friends have been quick to condemn Facebook for censoring and banning me. But they’re wrong. Facebook is Mark Zuckerberg but it’s not him who did this to me. It’s an algorithm. Or at best a callow youth called Verminox who is frustrated because he can’t get laid and the NRA keeps rejecting his membership application and won’t give him reasons why.

  Facebook won’t give me reasons, either. I was informed that I had violated community standards, which I imagine are closely related to the mythical line. Dear Obergruppenführer Verminox, have you ever heard of audi alteram partem? No, it isn’t a new car from Germany.

  I was banned on the grounds of one complaint. That strikes me as a little insane. How many Verminoxes must work there that they can ban someone every time a humourless rightwing nutjob files a complaint? Bashar al-Assad must complain endlessly about offensive stuff posted by members of the National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces. Do they get banned for 24 hours? Of course not. That kind of treatment is reserved for savages like me.

  On the day I was banned, Facebook sent me another message. “Ben, your friends have liked your posts 74 000 times! We’re glad you’re getting support from your friends and hope this has made the world feel a little closer.”

  A more accurate message might have been, “Ben, one of your 5 000 friends who have liked your posts 74 000 times was offended by a post. We’re sad that not all your friends support you and hope you understand why we have to ban you for 24 hours.”

  So I had no access to Facebook for a day. After the first hour, my skin started clearing up and my eyes stopped hurting. Six hours in and I could feel my short-term memory returning. By the evening, I felt so young and alive that two beautiful women offered to come home with me knowing they wouldn’t have to compete with Facebook for my attention.

  Getting punished by a company that covertly distributes personal information, and which quite possibly helped get Donald Trump elected, is a badge of honour. I’d recommend everyone try it.

  THE LETTER THAT GOT ME BANNED FROM FACEBOOK

  G’day Peter Dutton, Australian Minister of Home Affairs, Immigration & Whatever Else Takes Your Fancy.

  First off, congratulations on being called the Donald Trump of Australia. That’s quite an accolade, cobber. Between the two of you, the South will definitely rise again. But let me get to the point.

  I need to be on the list of white oppressed farmers with regard to your noble offer of special treatment in the visa department. I am not a farmer but that can easily be remedied. Tomorrow morning I shall dig up my modest garden and plant carrots, brinjals and chickens. I am familiar with livestock since I own a dog roughly the size of a goat, but less intelligent. And I sat on a tractor once. Will this be enough?

  I should mention that I also feel very oppressed because on Tuesdays, when Betty comes, I have to leave the house for the entire day because I can no longer stand the sound of vacuuming and breaking crockery. Sometimes she puts the radio on. Although I cannot understand what the presenter is saying, he is almost certainly urging her to rise up and stab me as I watch the telly.

  Thing is, Betty hasn’t assaulted me. Yet. If you think it would strengthen my case, I could put up a notice at the local Spar asking for a volunteer to knock me about a bit. How bad does the injury have to be? I don’t mind a small flesh wound. Just enough to get me in to, say, Darwin. But if it means losing an arm or leg, then I would have to insist on an apartment overlooking Sydney Harbour. Preferably in an area where the bars don’t close at 11pm.

  You are spot-on with your assessment that our white farmers “live in horrific circumstances”. The tiny corrugated iron shacks they call home, the lack of proper sanitation, unreliable transport, robbers around every unlit corner … oh, wait. I’m getting the 40 thousand whites who live in farmhouses confused with the 30 million blacks who live in poverty.

  Your highly credible Rupert Murdoch-owned newspapers have reported with fitting levels of outrage that 50 white farmers are murdered every year. Snowflake liberals, or, as you call them, crazy lefties, will be quick to point out that 50 black South Africans are murdered every day. What is this, a competition? I don’t know the going rate on the Caucasoid/Negroid Index, but you know as well as I do, Mr Dutton, that white lives are worth considerably more. Especially, in your case, near election time.

  Truth is, our darkies simply don’t know how to behave. If they’re not slaughtering farmers willy-nilly, they’re out there on the cricket pitch attacking the captain of the Australian team. It starts with a shoulder bump and the next thing you know, second slip is holding you down while the wicket keeper goes at your neck with a blunt chainsaw. Quite frankly, it’s not on. Then again, at least it’s not cheating.

  Now that our farmers know they can skip the English f
luency test – the only thing that ever stopped them from emigrating – you can expect a sharp increase in applications. You can put me at the top of the list because I am already fluent.

  When you said our farmers needed help from a “civilised” country like yours, hope surged through my bosom. Not that I have an actual bosom. That would ruin my chances of getting one of your special visas. Where we come from, men are men and women are women and never the twain shall meet. Well, they can meet for sex, obviously. You don’t have to worry about me in that district, mate. I love the sheilas. Sure, they don’t always feel the same about the likes of me and you, but who cares?

  We were a civilised country, once. You could ride on buses, go to the movies, walk on the beach, visit a park or go to a restaurant and it would be white people as far as the eye could see. White people only. Or, in the parlance of the good old days, slegs blankes.

  It’s our own fault, really. We took our eye off the ball. One minute we were letting Nelson Mandela out of prison and before we knew it, parliament was swarming in darkies demanding free education and jobs for all.

  How did this not happen in your great country? Oh, right. Britain cunningly sent shiploads of convicts to colonise the place. The Abos didn’t stand a chance against that bunch of brigands. You did allow a blackfella to become a member of parliament in 1971, though, which was awfully decent of you.

  Someone must’ve thought 1971 was a bit premature for that kind of thing because it wasn’t until 2015 that an indidgeridoo – my word for an indigenous Australian – was given a ministerial position. Assistant Minister for Health, wasn’t it? Smart move. Can’t do much damage there. Medicare does it all.

  The Abos had already been hanging about for 60 000 years when your mob came ashore in 1788, distributing pants and cholera to the needy. In 230 years they went from being 100 per cent of the population to three per cent. Anyway. They can’t complain. It was a good run.

  Sorry, mate. You don’t need me telling you about your own past. It’s all written down in history books like your Grade Five set work, How We Bushwhacked the Boomerang-Chuckers.

  That thing you did with the Abo kids, though? Brilliant. From 1905 to 1970, tens of thousands of the little blighters were rounded up and given to decent white families to raise. Some people call them the Stolen Generation, but that’s not right. If anything, they were the Borrowed Generation. You did give them back once they’d been taught to respect the Queen and love Jesus, right? No matter. I wouldn’t have minded if my brat had been taken away and raised by someone else, I can tell you. Would’ve saved me a bloody fortune on psychiatric fees.

  I should probably tell you something about our white farmers, since they’re going to be arriving soon. They’ll be coming by plane, I trust. I know what you guys do to immigrants who come by boat. You shunt them off to refugee centres to be molested by rabid dingoes before being shipped off to some or other godforsaken island in the South Pacific or Papua New Guinea where they are eventually hunted down and eaten by cannibals.

  Our farmers won’t stand for that kind of treatment, mate. The ones who do livestock are prolific breeders when it comes to sheep, cows and women. And the crop farmers will grow everything except marijuana. To a man they love rugby and animals, the rawer the better. And they are fighters and drinkers. No problems with assimilation there, cobber. If it weren’t for the harsh guttural accent you’d think they were true-blue Ozzies.

  Which, I have to say, doesn’t mean they deserve to be murdered. That’s the thing with our home invaders. You might anticipate a light slapping but then the kitchenware comes out and it’s not long before you’re getting your face ironed. Not nice. Not even if you have one of those very creased faces.

  But thank you for saying such good things about them, even though you’ve never met any. “The people we’re talking about want to work hard, they want to contribute to a country like Australia. We want people who want to come here, abide by our laws, integrate into our society, work hard, not lead a life on welfare.” Unlike those bloody Rohingya bludgers who think they can just take a nice sea cruise to Melbourne, develop a meth habit, go down the pub and say things like, “Wouldn’t mind going walkabout down the billabong and throwing some shrimp on the barbie, Bruce!” and reckon that gives them the right to go on the dole and taunt homos for a laugh.

  I should probably warn you. This abiding by your laws business? I wouldn’t expect too much from the farmers. Or any South Africans, really. We don’t bother much with laws. Can’t blame us, really. We had Jacob Zuma for nine years. The man is a proper wombat. He eats, roots and leaves, if you catch my drift. Imagine having 22 children.

  Obeying the law can get you killed in South Africa. We all drive at a constant 160 kilometres an hour and don’t stop for anything unless we want to wake up in the mortuary. Enormous semi-naked black men with machetes and leopards on leashes roam the streets and office buildings with impunity. The carnage around the water coolers on a Friday afternoon is too horrific for words.

  I suppose what I’m saying is that you should be giving these humanitarian visas to every white South African, not just the farmers. We are all under terrible pressure and fear for our sanity and our lives every minute of every day. Sure, farmers can grow stuff like cabbages and lambs and they know how to dig a hole, but a lot of us non-farmers are just as good with our hands. I, for instance, know a fair bit about origami. You never know when a couple of hundred paper swans might come in handy.

  Also, we white South Africans have very little apart from money, homes and jobs. It’s the darkies who have everything these days. Okay, there are some who have nothing. But even then they have plenty of it.

  You seem to have upset my government. They want a retraction. Not going to happen, right? Australians aren’t the apologising sort. Your prime minister refused to condemn or defend your comments. That Malcolm Talkbull is my kind of politician. Get up on the rabbit-proof fence and stay there.

  While you’re doling out visas, mate, you might want to chuck some cash at a bunch of local patriots called the Suidlanders. They’re trying to raise a million rand for things that’ll come in handy when the genocide starts for real. Stuff like medicine, radios and “especially diesel fuel because of its numerous versatile applications in conditions of war”. They drink it, you know, with cane spirits. It’s called spook and diesel. Three in a row gives you brain damage. For example, one of them wrote this on their website, “We shall be the last people in the history of the world that shall stand – as a homogeneous nation undiluted – to die for Christ against the wave of humanism that has been injected by aliens into the veins of the European peoples of the world today.”

  Anyway, possum. Best of luck with our farmers. There’s a good chance they will help you to get the old White Australia policy back on the table. Then again, there’s an equally good chance they will tell you to fuck off.

  That’s South Africans for you.

  WHEN DYING IS A NUMBERS GAME

  I have been told there is a 12.7 per cent chance of me having a stroke or heart attack within the next 10 years. This wasn’t, as you might think, shouted at me by an embittered ex-wife or someone I cut off in the traffic. This came from my doctor.

  That’s the risk you take when you visit a general practitioner and he sends you for blood tests, as he will, regardless. You can be there for a broken toe and within two minutes he will have you pinned to the floor poking and prodding and listening to your organs. When he lets you up, he’ll prescribe something to ease the pain and humiliation he’s just caused and tell you to go for blood tests.

  I was only there because, while saving a drowning infant from a shark-infested lagoon, something went in my lower back. Okay, fine. I was bending over the sink. It might have been the toilet. It felt like I had been shot with a speargun.

  My doctor shares a building with other doctors and I never have to wait very long to see him. I’ve barely started flirting with the diseased and dying when my name is called.
I have considered that I might be his only patient.

  Being familiar with his style, I often start undressing in the waiting room. This seems to upset some people but that’s not my problem. We are all there because something is wrong with us. To avoid creating the impression that I have mental health issues, I feign a limp or a cough. Sometimes I entice a child over while the mother is busy on Facebook and get him to sit next to me so that people think I’m there with a sick boy. It helps when he starts crying, and he almost always does. Facebook – making human trafficking easier for everyone.

  Before the doctor has even closed his door I am completely naked and waiting in position. Once the gloves are off and our breathing is back under control, we sit on opposite sides of the desk and exchange gifts. No, of course we don’t. We exchange pleasantries. How is the baby? Doctors always have babies. If not their own, then someone else’s. And if they don’t like the baby they have, they can always swap it for another. It’s one of the perks of being a doctor.

  He scribbles something on his pad, tears it off and slides it across the desk. I look at it, shake my head and slide it back. I tell him the pharmacists in the area aren’t familiar with Esperanto and make him do it again.

  He does what I ask but only on condition that I go for blood tests. I don’t like the idea. I never do well in tests. I got nine per cent for history in matric. He asks what I’d like to have done. Liposuction on my face and a willy like a racehorse, please. He puts me down for cholesterol, blood sugar, prostate and liver function. I was under the impression we’d just done prostate. He smiles and wags a finger at me. I immediately feel ill.

  Taking the form, I stand up and put my hand out. Doctors have a pathological aversion to shaking hands with patients but it’s important that we force them to do it. A lot of them need socialising and this is one way we can help.

  Of course I can’t just nip next door to PathCare and allow a stranger to open a vein in my arm. That would be too easy. I have to go home and fast. Nil per mouth. I once went to a gay bar and wore a wristband that said nil per bum. It got a big laugh. I don’t know. It was very noisy. They might not have been laughing.