From: Violence and Alcohol

There was a softness in our steps in that night as we padded up Speke Avenue heading for The Rocks, under the black starlessness of a night where the oppression of the clouds muted everything. We didn’t stop to think why we walked in silence or even why there were no catcalls from the hookers who lined Speke Ave. like garishly overpainted statues— gaudy hooker-paint was the renaissance art of the Museveni age.

The silence persisted, rubber soles on concrete pave, padding in unison, stopping milliseconds apart at the kerb, then crossing in fusion, until we got to The Rocks’ gate, then Rig uttered a sound. “Hmph,” he said, to mark his disgust at the line of teenagers begging the bouncers to let them in.

For some reason we found teenagers quite repugnant.

We entered after the bouncers had checked us for guns and knives and, even though Rocks is an open air bar, it was as if we had left the overcast city and entered a garden of light and sunshine. The crowds inside bustled and muttered with electric life, tributaries flowed of Pilseners and lager and vodka and gin and plucked eyebrows and designer denim and blazing hot smiles and foul language and casual sex and pop music and gleaming gleaming gleaming teeming dreaming. Out of life and into The Rock Gardens Cocktail Bar.

We found the others with no trouble— they had colonised a table right in the centre of the place. All the chairs around it were taken, so Righteous and I put ourselves down on the ground. As we descended I caught sight of Diana and Penyenia in the crowd about a dozen people away. The flashing disco lights flashed at just the right moment for me to see her screw up her face when she saw me drop to a squat, to communicate mock disapproval. I tapped my wrist, and she grinned back. The fact that we could speak to each other like this, without words, the significance of this went right past me, unnoted. She disappeared into the knot of people with a jerk— I am guessing Penny tugged at her and was going to ask her why she had suddenly stopped, to scold her for tarrying. She disappeared, and I continued to the floor, turning my attention to the crew seated around a table groaning under the weight of beer bottles and the mass of Cheese’s vigorous voice.
Cheese was in the middle of a story and it had everyone rapt; they didn’t have more than a ripple of nods to greet us.

“You want to know how dangerous heev is, you stick around and ask the man himself. You know he is in the joint,” Felix lowered his voice to say.

I figured that he wasn’t talking of AIDS mingling among the crowds at Rocks. He was talking of someone specific, but Righteous had to ask, “Who is around?”

“Martin Ochan. Who did you think, Magic Johnson?”

Rig tensed up visibly. “What, he’s going to come around here where we are?”

Eric snapped irritably. “Don’t be an idiot; the guy has HIV, not flu. If he comes here, he’s welcome.”

“Besides, and more to the point,” I added, “the boy can buy pints on a majorly generous level of proportions!” Toasts went around boisterously.

“I haven’t seen that guy sober in months,” I said, then Cheese explained:

“The guy has sworn that he will die of drink before he dies of AIDS,” Cheese said. “He said he will kill himself before the virus kills him.”

The conversation at Rocks turned into an unashamed celebration of our hypocrisy: the fact that none of us had to actually like Martin to be his buddies that night. As long as he came with an open wallet, and was ready to keep the beleaguered table groaning with beers, he was welcome. We were going to be bought friends, and were shameless about it.

While that absurd discussion took over the table I began to feel a tug rise in me. It was time to catch up with Diana. To explain that I wasn’t just being uncivilised by sitting on the floor.

No. More.

I got up without asking to excuse myself, but the guys were too far gone into their conversation to bother to ask why or where I was going. Things had got to the point where everyone had something to say. Even Rig, who had been so taciturn when we first entered, was beginning to loosen up. That thing, that “excitement” he had spoken about chasing that morning in the rain was in sight. He was beginning to feel it, and his pulse was quickening. This is what brings us to life after all: beer and talking trash. Normally, I would revel in it, dance and twirl in the mad, twisting beauty of this, love being intoxicated and obscene with the guys, young and drunk. But tonight, something stronger pulled me away.

I got up and began to search through the thick crowd, pushing through tight bundles of people jerking along to techno music, not so much moving as being moved, letting an invisible rope draw me through the labyrinth of crazy noise and wild movement. I didn’t know where I was going, yet I moved left and right without hesitation. Finally I got to my destination. At the bar, where she was sitting with her hands lazily tugging the label off a lager bottle. “I’ve been looking for you,” I said. “You want to go outside?”

She turned to a guy I hadn’t noticed had been sitting next to her. “I hope you don’t mind, but I’m going outside,” she said. The guy, a slim fellow with eager eyes, began to gather up his jacket and started to slip off his barstool.

“No, you stay here. I’ll be... back... probably,” she said. She got off her stool. I stopped her as she tried to depart.

“Tell him it’s not personal,” I said, noticing the perplexed look on the guy’s face.

Diana looked at him. “It’s not personal,” she told him.

I moved in front of her and she followed. The two of us tunneled through the crowd towards the gate. What was usually a mass of wild, waving abandon, ecstacy, freedom… call it fun, was now far different. It was a crowd of ululating, clawing grotesques, writhing in filth and corruption. There were bloodsuckers and murderers making up the pressing multitude under the flashing lights, there were things whose blood had been sucked out things that had been murdered. Things with eyes dazed and red, with fingers sharp and tipped with talons. Flashes of light, cigarette smoke and spilt liquor masked the sight and stench of rotting flesh, shadows obscured fangs and drumbeat muffled screams. I had to get out of there.

Outside at last. The chill of the virgin night was revitalising. A haze made itself apparent by means of a round blur around each streetlight. The damp cold grasped our faces firmly. Diana hugged her bare shoulders against the cold. I sat down on the kerb and it was like a falling tree. She sat next to me.

“We should have got that cat to give you his jacket,” I said.

“Mmm,” she agreed.

“Take mine.” I wriggled out of my sleeves. Diana wrapped the jacket over herself.

Two minutes passed in the vital air when we stayed silent. When it was over, I spoke.

“I don’t know why I am doing this. But it seems like its going to become a habit. It’s like soon I won’t be able to club anymore. Not if this keeps happening.”

“You’re going to retire?”

“Looks like it. Man, it’s like, sometimes the feeling just hits me and its like— boom!— all of a sudden, it all seems so ugly. So... so ugly and I just have to get out.”

“Either retire of find a way of fighting it. If you keep jumping out of clubs in the middle of the ceremonies, you’ll lose your friends.”

“Well, since you decided you’re not going back to Sydney, I’ll still have you.”

“No way. Not if you’re going to up and walk out of all my parties.”

A car zoomed past us. It was full. It screeched at the corner as the driver hit the brakes to avoid a drunken hooker who had staggered into the road. Diana and I both laughed quietly at this tableau.

I sighed. “There has to be more, you know? We can’t just be going out, getting drunk, hangover, back to work, week’s over, looking for wheels so we can go out and do it over again, all over again. There has to be more.”

“I swear, Chris, you can’t be complaining. You don’t know how lucky you are to be able to have this. You could have been her, you know.” Diana jerked her shoulder in the direction of the hooker’s bony silhouette. A sharp spark rose and rapidly shrunk around the head of the silhouette. Lighting a cigarette?

She vanished into an alley then, making us conclude that it wasn’t a cigarette, it was a joint of marijuana. Otherwise she would have gone ahead and smoked it in the open.

“I am her,” I said. “What’s the difference?”

“STDs,” Diana grinned.

“That’s what I’m saying— is this the best we can do? Keep on, I don’t know, gravitating like this to places like this? Prostitutes and stuff like that?”

“Moral indignation, Chris?”

“No, no. We are all whores here. At least they are honest about it. I mean, why do we have to be at places where we be... where we are all... dishonest whores?”

“Chris, it is the best we can do. We’re human. Fun, that’s the most we can get out of... life or whatever.”

“What about happiness?”

“Movies and storybooks only.”