WOLF WOLF DIE WOLF

 

There was once a little shepherd-boy.

When I was at school, I just wanted to do what the other kids were doing. In Grade 5, all I wanted were braces. My parents refused, I had perfect teeth.  

 

The shepherd boy thought he would play a trick on the villagers.

So he ran toward the village crying out, with all his might,

“Wolf! Wolf! Come and help!”

I ran into a big glass sliding door at ballet class and bashed one of my teeth out, lying in a smidge of blood and faking a hit-by-a-glass-door coma.

 

All the villagers came running out to help the boy!

 

My mom conceded to embrace my lower teeth and I was soooo happy.  I had the braces removed after the longest and most painful 2 months, because all I wanted was a standing ovation for my exquisitely transformed mouth and my brand new dramatically made-over appearance. I stood in the kitchen grinning at my dad, he smiled back at me. I grinned wider, with slightly stretched facial muscles, he grinned back. I grinned grimacing, ‘DAD! I had my braces removed!’ He said, ‘Well done’ and carried on blending a Herbal Life fruit smoothie. ‘DAD! LOOK!’ He managed a very forced, ‘OH’ with a blatantly obvious, I-had-no-idea-you-had-braces-and-am-not-entirely-sure-what-braces-are-other-than-the-2-straps-that-hold-up-Mr-Chaplin’s-pants look. ARGH! All that pain and suffering for no reason and my teeth don’t look any different at all!

But the villagers saw no wolf, told the boy to shut up and went back for a beer in the pub.

The stupid Ornotholodontist guy had left a stupid piece of metal wiring in the back of my mouth so as to keep them straight, even though they had always been straight! A couple of months later, my friend gasped at my mouth. With a slow denying gesture toward the car mirror, I toothy-grinned my reflection.

 

“WOLF WOLF!”

 

My 4 bottom teeth looked like they’d been demolished with a nuclear sized implosion. They’d fallen in on one another and caused an enamel-calcium pile up only seen in the worst devastation horror tooth movies.

 

“WOLF WOLF” screamed the boy.

 

The villagers were past out drunk and didn’t hear the screams.

 

Running bare foot in tattered clothes and my waving arms, I blasted into the Ornotholodontist guy’s rooms and demanded he fix my gobber. All he did was remove the broken wire culprits from my toofs and left me with a broken house of cardteeth. The damage is still very visible and the property market in the area has completely collapsed. Surrounding teeth have rude graffiti and broken windows on their dulling grey paint.

 

The little boy went to bed, terrified.

 

Then, all my friends were getting their Tonsils out, I never even managed to scrape up fake tonsillitis except once in London long before it had became fashionable. It was like learning the words to all the Hanson songs and then them disappearing into bad-brother-music abyss. Now, all of a sudden, bursting red pustuly tonsils were the in thing and I had nothing, not even so much as an itchy and scratchy throat after standing outside in winter with my mouth open dropping infected pebbles into it!

 

One day, like magic, my jaw locked. Thank you! Thank you for my ailment so that I can fit in the world of cool people with victim complexes, so that we can sit around our packed lunches and share our adult experiences of pain and suffering during big break, while the boys place an eternal game of touch rugby, that they are probably still playing right now in the quad, a decade later.

 

A locked jaw! ‘MOM, MOM! I need my wisdoms out. Ow ow ow, it’s so sore oh oh oh ow’

 

“WOLF, WOLF”

The villagers left their work and ran to the field to see what the commotion was this time.

No sooner said than I was lying on a hospital bed in a green, backless robe with my mama and papa standing by my side. Oh I’m so brave. Oh I’m so grown up. I hope everyone in school knows that I’m having my wisdoms out. I hope they’re all talking about it! Counting down from 10, I got to ‘Te…’and was out cold.  

The villagers watched the boy as he lay  screaming, ‘WOLF WOLF!’ in his sleep.

The next thing I remember is my father pushing me on a wheelchair, with a massive ice-cubed head gear piece wrapped around my entire face, I was totally delirious and drowsy. My dad was having a ball pushing me fast through the slippery floors of the hospital

 

Then, a ridge in the floor. Doof. Hit it.

“WOLF! WOLF!” he screamed. “Help!”

WEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE. My completely paralytically drugged body flew head-gear first through the sliding hospital doors – DOOF – onto the outdoor pavement. And there my dad stood, in gawking giggles at his flung child.

 

“WOLF! WOLF!”

 

The villagers took a shovel and knocked the boy out.

 

My mom and dad were in hysterical laughter. I was unconscious. Again.

The villagers feasted on a big bowl of lamb curry and howled at the full moon.

My Guava goes to Hollywood

PART 1:

 

Let’s get straight to it, like a poor man with a per-minute prostitute.

 

I had been with a guy for a month and we had already tried all sorts of exciting sexy up/down/in/out/wet/dry positions and god said, let it be good, and it was good. Then, last week, a little sparrow arrived on my windowsill chirping away. He sang, ‘It’s his birthday tomorrow, it’s his birthday.’ And I said, ‘Thank you sparrow, send love to your folks.’ And off he went.

 

Oh good lord, a birthday with a new relationship which is 5 shots short of serious. What to do, what to wear, what to buy, what to lick!

 

With little desire to spend my paycheck that always goes to feeding the starving and building orphanages, I had to take a nap to consider my options. In my dream an angel appeared, she was clothed in spandex with a pink whip and a petition against Eskom. I signed it. She asked me for R5 and then whispered ‘Hollywooood’ and she disappeared into a crowd of Indian dwarves

 

Hollywood! Let’s not be fooled by the shiny lights and fake boobs of the pantie-less 75 year old ladies whose wrinkled lips and tongues dangle aimless and muscle-less reaching the cold water in the loo when squatting down for pee. Let’s not be fooled!

 

Hollywood means one thing here! All off! Gone. Vamoose, Asta LaPasta baby. Shaved, plucked, ripped, torn, smooth as a baby’s…I’ll stop there. No grizzle, no forest, no 5 o’ clock shadow, no spike, no in-growns, no George Double-U. Nada! Just a warm, soft, nestling bed – an undisputable and 99% guaranteed fool proof pressie for Birthdays or Christmas or St Virgin’s day.

 

Hollywood, here we come.

 

 

PART 2:

 

There I was, with a dream in my heart and good intentions at my side, ‘Practice selfless, random acts of kindness’ they say; if a full bikini wax didn’t fit on that list, then no charity or NGO work ever could.

 

I arrived at the little beauty salon, underwearless, but still with trousers on so as not to tempt the parking guards. I wasn’t underwearless for this occasion, I always am.

 

Unfortunately my visit was uncalled for, which meant, that I hadn’t called first. Turns out, there are a lot of people who need beauty! Shocking, I know. The lady that I usually go to for my ‘trims’ or Brazilian airstrip was frantic and totally booked out for the rest of the day and for the next three weeks! I should also at this point, mention that she was deaf. The greatest waxer I had ever met, but deaf nonetheless.

 

I had driven far and drank little that morning and so my PMS that seems to last all month was in full bloom, self-pity and monogamy were on my mind as I weighed up having to buy a normal present, from his normal girlfriend, for our normal lives. OH GOD NO! So, I asked if there was anyone else who could take me and mow the lawn, but the lovely young and slightly gothic girl behind the counter didn’t speak a word of English or any other European dialect like slow-English, word-at-a-time English, are-you-stupid English. So, I resorted to my very sad and pitiful Afrikaans, ‘Is daar enige ander mense wat kan vir my vat om my bikini te doen?’ I asked with a knowing shame. So far, it wasn’t looking anything like the lesbian fantasies that I’d been having since the thought of a full-bikini wax had come to me in a dream. Then, like in the unmade fil, South African Beauty, she beamed at me…beaming. She nodded and stood up, closed the front shop door and said, ‘Kom’. 

 

Sweet Hesoes, it was happening, and all I could think of was, ‘but I haven’t shaved!’

 

It was a short corridor, the brilliantly talented deaf wax lady was working behind the first door, I felt a deep jealousy toward the lucky manwoman that was getting their back defurred as I thought of her gentle, delicate hands working ‘tuft by tuft’ so as to cause as little injury as possible. I had to accept it right there, I was with the Afrikaans goth now, it could either mean a lifetime’s worth of illegal ‘doctor-patient’ happenings, or getting my clitoris ripped out. The former was surprisingly more tempting.

She smiled and asked me to take my clothes off in her vernacular. There I stood, half naked and vulnerable at a quiet beauty salon in Cape Town with scarring and terror imminent. Had I told anyone where I was going to be? Who will keep my car? Should I call my mom? How many roads must a woman walk down, before she agrees to a full bikini wax?

 

The road to hell was indeed paved with good intentions, but the front door to hell was built with hot wax and a hairy guava.

 

 

PART 3:

 

There I lay, my gat was indeed kaal and the midsection area in question lay exposed to the elements. She tried to make small talk with her weird African dialect, but all I could do was nod and agree and giggle accordingly. In retrospect, I hope she wasn’t telling me about her dying sibling. Things started off okay, I have an exceptionally high tolerance for pain and in cases like piercings and the odd lip bite, I even quite enjoy the pumping adrenalin of it. I have a bad habit of laughing when I’m in pain, the more it hurts, the more I laugh.

 

The outer edges of the hedge are usually manageable and she got through them like a semi-professional hairdresser shaving a bald man, easy and simple. For those of you who have never witnessed nor experienced a Hollywood or any other similar case of human torture, it is waxed from the outside in, from the fine and sparse to the dense and coarse, like a magical forest.

 

I was comfortable and relaxed, shaky, but at peace. Then…a cold shudder hit me as I felt a storm cloud loom overhead. My white-faced black-haired hair-remover turned a luminous version of pale. We both knew. The next moves required her to place her full hand on my fruit so as to avoid removing any internal organs with the waxstrip rip off. A full hand on my fruit! We were arguably the same age, but she seemed younger and far less ‘informed’ by the cruel outside world. To say the least, she was innocent with no chance of parole. The tension could have been plucked with a blunt tweezer. The air was snappable and my tummy growled. Then, like a female Jesus, Grace walked in. Grace, the talk, confident, experienced, deaf, waxing deity! She jumped to stop my Afrikaans geisha from putting boiling sticky goo between my labia and yelled a beautifully impressive, ‘Nooooooo’ in midflight. I pierced my eyes closed.

 

I tried to interpret the speech that was coming out, I didn’t understand either of them, all I knew was that I needed to wee. I was lying with my legs spread eagle, a strange local foreigner girl on my left leg and a deaf waxing god woman on my right and somebody was going to have to touch my poonani.

Then, I felt a warmth on my lovely lady lips. A soft and gentle recognizable warmth, followed by some more warmth, a smaller patch of it, but still, warmth. I opened my eyes and looked down, and there, right before me, were two ladies mid-demonstration using generic larger than life sign-language, each with one hand on one lip and a wax strip in the other. In some kind of sick and twisted slow motion, they both dabbed their wax sticks onto the very curve of my womanhood, patted it dry, as they leaned to the patch and prepared for the rip. Now, for just a moment, I must mention that there is a patch on a female that is far more sensitive than the other patches. It is the top of the ‘line’, where the split ends and the worlds meet as one again, this is the patch in question. The pain is comparable to falling groin first onto a serrated spear.

Be mindful. Don’t think. Think puppies. Think…

 

R.I.P!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

Rest in peace, rest in peace, rest in peace!

 

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

 

Like a well-choreographed Grade 7 dance eisteddfod, they had tugged my rug in one violent and cruel act of synchronized waxing. I was in hysterics. I was laughing so hard I couldn’t breathe. I was sure I was going to wee everywhere. Tears were streaming down my cheeks. I was in some kind of hysteria-pain-shock. I was hyper and ventilating. I hadn’t even noticed that both were now rubbing me gently down under, patting me with talcum powder, stroking the suffering skin and reading my lips, so to speak.

 

It was over. They had done it. I had done it. I was a bare naked lady. A happy consumer with a ‘lovely to touch, lovely to hold, and if you wax it, consider it gold’ finished product.

 

Then, home sweet home for the celebrations. ‘Happy Birthday baby, I have a surprise of you.’ I said in my sexiest voice as I pulled down my pants. ‘Da da da da daaaaa’ to my best royal trumpet impression. There I stood, gift in hand and grin on face, ‘Do you like it?’

 

After slight deliberation, he stared at it for a while and then looked up at me, ‘You look like a f—ing 10 year old!’

 

He grabbed his bible and left.

 

And there I lay, spread bald eagle, in my birthday suit.

 

 

 

Rome Shmome

PART 1

 

Midnight in Pisa. Brr. Perhaps the tower is just leaning so it can be close the fire. It was an icy and disturbing night at the Pisa Central. We were at the beginning of our long journey home. A train from Pisa to Rome. A train from Rome to the airport. A long flight to Doha and then a longer connecting flight home. A total travelling time of 36 hours with no sight-seeing or eyelash-batting time. With only a handful of Euros left, we were booked on the 2am-not-so-bright-hours-of-Sunday-morning-o-clock train to save on additional accommodation.

 

2 hours early for our first train, in a dingy station made up of people that could have been extras in Alien. There was a fully kitted army sergeant, groups of only-eye Muslims, some Chassidic Jewish tweens and of course…a nun or a well-dressed prostitute, one can never be too sure. I thought I was at ground zero. That this was it, that I would be the very first ashes of the mushroom cloud. Don’t look, don’t talk, play dead.

 

Then, a familiar shiver, the unmistakeable need to wee! WHY NOW?! WHY HERE?! WHY WHY WHY is one boob bigger than the other, WHY?! A half an hour debate took place whether it was worth going to find a toilet, who should go first or if we should both go with our 900Kg pulley-less bags. No, one at time, her first. I loved her, but the fish were biting and we were both bait. She was off. I waited, huddled, staring into the depths of my own retina trying to avoid eye contact with all major and minor religious groups around me and concentrating on flexing my lemonade muscles.

 

She came back, poltergeist-pale with the bottom of her long trousers drenched and the look of a 5-year old experiencing regret for the first time, knowing they had just done something very very wrong. ‘Don’t do it’, she said trembling and digging in the bags for clean trousers, ‘Just…don’t’.

 

Now curiosity as well as an exploding bladder was killing me. I got up and sprinted faster than an Italian stallion who had been caught having sex with a man’s wife and sister at the same time. I followed the universal picture of loo, not male or female specific, just loo.

 

Behind door number one ladies and gentlemen? A little room, similar to one you see in the opening scene of Saw, only this one had a mustard-coloured liquid layering the floor. I’ll keep it in, I thought, feeling a little starting to trickle down my thigh. NO, I CANT! I MUST I MUST I MUST! And I did! And it was wonderful. The most horrendous stench of old Italian urine now blended with the fresh perfumed dilution of mine. Ah, to be young, desperate, willing and able!

 

PART 2

 

We got on the train, found an empty bunker and put my phone alarm on for 5.55am, with the train arriving at our station at 6am. Cuddling for warmth, we passed out, tired eyes and empty bladders, safe at last. A couple of hours into our quiet meditative slumber, a stinky, buffalo-shoe wearing, hair sprouting from weird moles, sweat-bathed man climbed into our bunker. He woke us up with very obvious gropes looking for a cuddle-snuggle on the midnight train. ‘No no no’, we both mumbled. His hands went up in the defensive ‘it-was-an-accident’ position. With every half-asleep push away, he would try again moments later. Just let us sleep Stinky Man! Stop it! STOP IT! *WHACK* Finally, he got the message as my friend elbowed him in his willy and we all fell asleep, hopefully with a little internal bleeding on his side.

 

In an exhausted daze, we woke up at a station in Rome just before 6am, but we thought we were going to the main one, Roma Termini and this certainly wasn’t it. We asked the Stinkman if the train was still going to Roma Termini and he replied, ‘Si Si Termini Si’ along with the hand motion of ‘next’ so we thought Oh it’s the next stop and stayed on the train in a delirious haze-state, waiting for the next stop. The next stop wasn’t it and nor was the one after and so we asked him again to which he said, ‘Si Si 8 o clock Roma Termini Si’. OHH, it arrives at Roma Termini at 8! I hesitated, slightly worried about missing our flight. My friend convinced me that the train obviously went AROUND the whole of Rome and then came back again and I was like, ‘Oh Ok’. Great, we can go back to sleep for a couple of hours instead of waiting in the ice-cold Italian morning. It’s a half an hour trip to the airport from Roma Termini and with our flight leaving at 12 noon. that works out perfectly! Great! Well done Stinky Man!

 

After a nap and some more attempted fondling from the Dodge, we woke up at quarter to 8. We got up and looked outside our bunker. Our eyes had to get used to the bright light. Our eyes also had to get used to the landscape. Things started looking a tad suspicious…rotting houses with smoke coming out of them, anorexic dogs and gross fly-swarmed mounds of litter covering dirt land. This was definitely NOT Rome.

 

After a minor panic and the #(%$^ idiot in our bunker now nodding, ‘Si Si Roma Termini 9 o clock Si’, we both dashed off in opposite directions looking for someone who spoke a sentence a little longer than SI SI ROMA TERMINI FUCKING SI! After knocking on windows and waking whole families, we were on the heart attack side of anxiety. Then a little Chinese girl who had watched our antics said, ‘Napoli Termini’!!! NAPOLI!! Isn’t that a type of PASTA!!!!! Oh my god, we’re about to arrive in Naples and are over 2 and a half hours away from our first 6am stop that was at the right station!

 

It was now 8.45 and we were about to arrive in Naples with no money and we were supposed to check in in an hour and a half!! We jumped off the train the second it stopped at 8.46 and by absolute fluke, at that instant, there was one going in the opposite direction leaving at….8.46 – we had 60 seconds to swap trains and get seated without having a chance to check if it was the right train. The conductor asked for our tickets, I gave him our last ones and threw an unbrushed toothy flirt-smile. Oh? This is not the right ticket? But we just bought it? We have no money? We’re pretty girls and have boobs? Oh, we can stay for free? Gracias!

 

With our sweet smiles and fake ignorance, we got away without paying the 30 euro each ticket. And somehow, they took another route which only took an hour and a half – but it still meant we arrived at Roma Termini at 11.20, leaving 40 minutes to travel a half an hour journey with ten minutes to find check-in, go through security and board! We jumped on the first available train and got away with not paying that ticket either, oh to be a female travelling is just not fair on menboys. We arrived at the airport after boarding time had ended; I had to ask a stranger to help with my dead-buffalo-heavy bag. The stranger’s name was Jesus. I said, ‘Oh thank god you’re back!’

 

We were outrightly refused to even check in; all the desks had closed centuries ago. We ran up and down, boobs jiggling, bags flinging, accidental farting and eventually, the man who had completely refuted gave in to our whinging minge, but it turned out 5 Arabic men had arrived late for the same flight and no one was going to say no to them. The guy who got us through? His name was Christian. Nice try! But I’m still an agnostic cynic. With a marathonesque finish, we got on the plane the minute it was supposed to take off.

 

We sat down, dripping with sweaty brows and underarms, thirsty for any form of alcohol, exhausted and hungry, but more relieved than after my Italian Crouching Wee experience. Still having learnt no more than ‘Si Si Roma Termini Si’, the Captain welcomed everyone in Italian. Moments later, a female with the English translation, ‘Hello and welcome and…the flight is delayed until further noticed.’

 

Obviously.