I wrote this piece as part of a creative writing assignment in my Honours year (2009) and, having organised a punk show lately (my first), felt it relevant once more. 'Mad Circle' is based on an experience I had with my best friends when we were about fifteen. It was the first of many adventures together and ten years on, we're still friends and still adventuring. This experience even found its way into a song many years later when they formed a girl band. These memories take me back to a time of All Stars, studded everythings, safety pins and unnatural hair colour. Much love to them and to my roots: punk rock <3
Mad Circle
It all started with a note. A hand-written, step-by-step master plan concocted on a piece of paper torn out from my school exam pad. The red margin and feint blue lines, as hard as they tried, could not contain my excited, static scrawl to their allocated boundaries. This note, or letter, folded in a specific way - triangles and squares - eventually secured itself as a tight little bundle of paper with a flap mimicking a clasp as one would see on a diary. It was addressed to Dee Dee, Mandy and Angie, with bold black lines carrying the hollow warning: “Your Eyes Only”.
I can’t say it was all my idea, but I like to think I got the ball rolling with this piece of paper. Luckily we were all in the same class for Grade 10 biology, which ensured the poignancy and longevity of this letter as it could be passed around, undetected, gaining momentum and new ink for the entire double period. Mrs Waspe, our usual sharp-sighted teacher was absent that day, and drowsy Mrs Robbins filled in for her. If Mrs Waspe had been there that day then I doubt this letter would’ve gone any further. At least until we got to second break where we could break our verbal silence and freely communicate by talking over each other, at the same time, and having to repeat everything a few times because no one ever caught the first draft.
The exhilaration and school-girl giggles this letter inspired carried over to second break anyway, only this time the four of us chose to sit away from the rest of the group. Not out of spite, but the more people in on our plan the more risky it became, plus there was only limited space in the taxi. I always resented second break being considerably shorter than first break. It was a Thursday. We really needed this extra time to finalise our plans, run over what we would tell our parents, and mutually reassure one another that this was: (a) not a stupid idea, (b) we would not end up in a gutter in Newtown, and (c) it would be the best night of our lives. I suppose we had nothing else as exciting to compare it to so (c) was a fair statement. The bell rang signaling the end of second break and I couldn’t help but feel the frustration and understated anxiety creep in, despite putting on a brave face (which others often confused with a serious disposition). This just meant that the planning would have to continue this evening over the phone, in hushed whispers in case our parents heard, but not too quiet as to warrant suspicion - and the game of broken telephone began. I phoned Dee Dee. Dee Dee phoned Mandy. Mandy phoned Angie. Angie in turn phoned me. And so it went. Thursday drew its curtains and retired. Colleen was adamant she was sick, but we secretly knew she just couldn’t go through with it. Our usual five was down to a noticeable four.
Friday approached. All through that school day I could taste my anxiety, it lingered in my taste buds - the food from the tuck shop didn’t taste good. Or bad. Or anything. The Fizz Pop I ate at second break irritated my tongue and I threw half of it away. The butterflies in my stomach were so unbearable I wanted to set them free, but held onto them in case they took my entire stomach with them and I lost my nerve. The final bell resonated in my ears a little longer than it should have.
Friday, today, now, is a hot, sticky summer’s day in the northern suburbs of Johannesburg, the kind of day where your school shirt sticks to your back unkindly, and your collar feels like a thermostat. I’ve never considered myself a rebel, but something about living the sheltered lives we did, and surrounded by the rugby playing, square-toed-shoe-wearing, Durban accented boys and their surrounding Americana cheerleaders (with actual pom poms) synonymous with our school, made this little adventure just that much more appealing, as well as the fact that we were going to see our undisputed favourite band. The same band I would listen to later that day as I was carefully choosing my clothes and deciding which shoes were more punk rock - classic black All Stars or something with skulls on. Maybe I could draw skulls and the anarchy ‘A’ on my plain white slip on’s? DIY is definitely more non-conformist.
A few final smses are sent amongst ourselves. Relief drains the colour back into my cheeks. Everyone’s still on board! My speech is choppy and punctuated with a slight excess of spit, a dead give away of the excitement welling up inside me which will explode if I don’t keep my calm. The narrower canal of my neck acts as a temporary constriction, perhaps foreshadowing the Black Label I’d drink later that night which some stranger would purposefully tap with his Black Label - the mouth of mine connecting with the foot of his - to cause it to fizz out violently due to the high carbon concentration and bottle-neck, reverse funnel effect.
The thought of my dad finding out what I’m actually up to makes me feel sick, as I look over at him in the car as he drives to drop me off at ‘movies’ at Monte Casino. He asks again where I’ll be sleeping and who’ll be fetching me. “Mandy’s parents are fetching us and we are all going to have a slumber party at her house after movies. I’ll phone you in the morning”, is my rehearsed response. My dad loves me. I’m his only daughter, his only child. The lie sits in my throat like a ball of rubber bands. When I speak I’m almost afraid he’ll smell the rubber on my breath. He asks again why it’s necessary for me to take a backpack with to the movies. I remind him it’s because I’m sleeping at Mandy’s house and need clothes and my toothbrush. In reality I have no intention of sleeping at all that night, and the clothes in my bag are actually a change of clothing to wear that evening. My dad already doesn’t approve of my grubby, anti-ladylike, hand-drawn shoes. The other three have all told their parents the same thing, minus Mandy whose parents think she’s sleeping at my house. My dad pulls into the drop-off zone and drives right up to the entrance where everybody’s standing. Why does he always have to drop me off so close? My cheeks burn, I kiss my dad good bye and sidle out the car, not making eye-contact with anyone and hoping my feet will smell their way to The Three.
The four of us, all burdened with back packs, are a relatively odd sight at a casino - a world of glittery clutch-purses - like misplaced pilgrims on our journey to enlightenment in a parallel universe. Once inside the pseudo-Tuscan bathroom, the excitement is unbearable and practically oozes through our adolescent pores. I swap my conservative jeans for an army skirt with relatively no shape and yank a pair of fishnets on. Glancing around I see the transformation take place and The Four re-emerge with ripped stockings, studded belts, tartan, safety pins and band badges pinned all over us as if we are dependent on them for keeping our clothes together. In Mandy’s case, she is. I end my call and place my sturdy Nokia 3510 into my backpack - our Rose Taxi is on its way! Now we wait. Our next stop will be Carfax, Newtown, Johannesburg CBD.
The four of sit in the back of an old, beige Mercedes despite the vacancy of the passenger seat. The leather of the seats is well worn and split in some places to reveal the rotting interior. With each corner He takes, our bodies slide zombie-like in the opposite direction. Normally I like my space but tonight I don’t mind sitting so close. My hands are like the outside of a cold bottle with condensation dripping down the sides and my heart is thumping in my chest like a bass drum without the steady rhythm. The unease has set in. All the doubts and legitimate concerns I’d suppressed until now have simmered to the surface all at once. Eerie silence and mannequin-like postures confirm The Three are feeling the same as me: young, stupid, worried, and both connotations of delirious. What if our parents find out? What if my dad tries to phone? Mental note: switch off phone and tell dad battery died. No wait, then how will I phone him in the morning? Dee Dee’s phone. But what if she doesn’t have airtime? I know Mandy doesn’t and Ang doesn’t have a phone. I’m going to have to leave it on. I tell the driver, whose mutual silence adds to the taut atmosphere, to head towards town.
This drive is taking so long. I cannot take my eye off the metre, shamelessly counting away and simultaneously draining our wallets. He looks over his shoulder at what seems directly at me as I’m sitting in the middle. “WHERE in town?” he says. “Carfax, Newtown” I reply, trying to steady my voice and seem confident. I meekly ask him if he knows how to get there. “Pimp Street?” He says. This thickens the rubber ball in my throat, my old fiend, as it reminds me, jarringly, about the dangerous, ‘dodgy’ situation we’re voluntarily driving right into. I can’t help but think, judging by his look and almost mournful expression, that he too is a father with a daughter my age and doesn’t approve of what I’m doing. Or perhaps I’ve superimposed my dad’s generic expression of disappointment onto his face out of guilt. “No”, I reply and try swallow a rubber band that has come loose from the ball - “I think it’s Pim Street. Pimmm”, I say with added emphasis on the ‘m’ and lack thereof of a second ‘p’. He nods and the silence continues. I’ve never been to Carfax let alone Pim Street and I have no idea how town works. It dawns on me we’re about to be abandoned in the middle of nowhere, or at least the centre of somewhere. Why don’t any of us have older boyfriends with cars? One day when I’m a parent my children will be able to tell me anything, and won’t end up in hazardous situations like this. My feelings are misplaced: anger for worry; blame for regret.
We arrive on a dark, industrial street. The taxi stops, so does my heart. The driver speaks. My heart beats again but from my stomach. “Are you sure this is the place?” I ask while looking around and seeing how barren the street looks. “Yes” He replies, “Pimp Street, Newtown”. Maybe that second ‘p’ is not unintentional. Okay. He must be right. We pay Him. He leaves. Where is the motley crew of people we’re used to seeing? All we can see are large, rusted doors leading to what looks like a warehouse. After a mild panic, we realise there’s another entrance and briskly, and as a parody of vigilance, walk around to the other side, four abreast. And desperately hoping ID won’t be checked.
We get in and are greeted by mohawks, dread locks, leather jackets, blunt spikes, suspenders and pork pie hats, tutus worn with Doc Martins, tattoos, piercings, unnatural hair colours - we have arrived! And it’s painstakingly obvious how young we look. We have none of the above. We look like school girls trying to fit in to not ‘fitting in’. Vegans, atheists, anarchists, vegan-atheist-anarchists, Rude Boys, drunks: the scene collective. Someone thrusts a Profane Existence ‘zine into my hand. Upon reading this later I encounter, for the first time, Black Bloc and other distant organisations.
The interior of Carfax is almost how you’d imagine an underground club of this variety to be, yet it’s difficult to describe and the atmosphere is hard to pin down and label neatly. It’s dark and it feels dark. It’s smoky yet there’s a constant, cold breeze coming from somewhere. Real x-rays of broken bones (perhaps from broken homes) roguely decorate the bar area and the unisex bathroom toilets are made purely out of metal and don’t have seats. I later find out this is to prevent people from doing drugs on them.
The band, our band, has just started. We walk, impulsively, in the direction of the surging skank circle or ‘mad circle’ in some circles. From the outside it’s complete lunacy: people skipping in an anti-clockwise ring, punching the air, shouting “oi” regularly, with exaggerated movements and genuine smiles. A warped, disfigured ring-around-the-rosies. And sweat, so much sweat! There’s the occasional spot of blood - if you fall down, get up as quickly as you can or you’ll get stampeded over. It looks violent and silly. But by standing on the fringe, you take a lot more misdirected punches and foot tramples that leave green bruises. Chaos. Wayward, sprawling bodies, whole bodies contributing to the part. Rings and rings of people heading in a definitive direction, leaving a hollow in the middle. If one saw this from above it would look like the eye of a storm, of a great oncoming hurricane. The centre offers a brief calm from the storm. The guy next to me, with wood glue or gelatine or something equally adhesive in his hair to keep up his 30 centimetre spikes, taps my Black Label, causing it to rush up like the clenched fists punching the air, and shouts into my ear: “If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em!”, and with that pushes me in and watches as the fast current sweeps me away.
Once inside, the madness intensifies but the lunacy makes perfect, rational sense. I don’t feel silly and I’m not getting hurt. Don’t think, just go! If I fall down there’ll be at least five sets of hands to pull me up instantaneously as they complete their round. You can get lost in here but not be lost at all. What a way to react to a band. Not only do you hear the music and see the band, this circle allows you to feel the music. It personifies it, giving it an actual presence you can touch, smell, and taste (on occasion). Organised chaos. Hands, feet and smiles - many parts making up the unified whole.
The heart pumps blood around the body. Blood is made up of many little parts namely cells, many many cells, which move a-round through the veins. A-round and a-round. Constant flow, constant motion. Fast. All that is stationary becomes a blur. Biology class is a lifetime ago.
The band is the heart that pumps us around. Our fluid body, surging in and out and chanting “freedom is a state of mind” and “ska, it’s who you are” criss cross next to the heart, some cells removing themselves and joining the heart to stage-dive back in. Heart and body are one. Their lyrics are our lyrics. Their ideas are our ideas. They make the beats but we own the rhythm.
The band finishes. The whole is broken down into its parts again. People start to leave. We drain the party as much as we can without being the last people there. We still have to wait for a taxi to come collect us. Back to reality. Harsh, cold reality. Where are we going to spend the night? It’s only 2am, we expected this show to go on for at least another 3 hours! Regardless, we need to get back to Fourways. We agree that we should go to Fontana’s (because it’s open 24 hours) and see from there. A slight deviation from the plan. We get dropped off, fork out what’s left of our money, and face our long night at a fast food restaurant. The smell of chicken is nauseating. Chicken pores right through my skin. We go sit in the bathroom. Thank God for free sanitation! I fall asleep sitting upright against a cubicle door. The Three’s voices fade...
I’m awake again. There’s a new plan. We will walk to Fourways Mall and wait there rather. That way it might be safer and in the morning - the later, lighter morning - we can phone our parents and tell them we went for breakfast and they must fetch us from there rather. I’m tired and cold and don’t really want to leave my cosy spot on the cold, hard floor. But majority rules.
It’s still very dark. My ears are ringing as a side effect of the loud music, but the ringing is physical proof this all actually happened. We’re scared. I’m hungry. My stomach starts to growl like a beast disturbed of its slumber. We start our journey. Two are hand in hand, one nervously smokes (but doesn’t inhale) a menthol cigarette, and one clutches a pink, plastic casing of pepper spray. A parody of protection. We walk to Fourways Mall, our Mecca, and it seems to take another life time. I keep telling myself that the sun will come up at any moment and soon, soon, I’ll be in my warm bed sleeping. A nearby, hoarse voice asks what the time is. I check my watch. 4.20 am. This reality check and the dejection that comes with it is a whiplash of reality and I almost resent her for asking. We still have HOURS to go until we can phone our parents, let alone go home! I feel aligned to the cliché that light brings hope, but clichés are overused for a reason. I wish the sun would rise.
We finally reach our destination and are almost surprised to find an open door. We enter at the bottom side of the mall by the movies, take the stairs to the left of us, go up two flights, turn left into a corridor, and right into the bathroom. We know this place well. They were right, this does feel safer.
I wake with a start again. The Three are vaguely awake and slapping their tired mandibles together at an attempt at conversation. The mall is coming alive! From our little sanctuary I feel like we are inside the great machine. People start to arrive, dropped off early by ‘real’ taxis before the retail day starts. I can feel the inner workings of the machine as it starts to grind into motion. I’ve lost all sense of time. Artificial lighting, especially artificial lighting in a white walled and floored, near-sterile environment tends to do this. My heart rises out of my stomach (having dropped a second time) and pumps fresh blood through my veins - the sun must be up! It is Saturday morning! We’re alive! I look at The Three and feel this unspoken bond between us strengthened by our pilgrimage.
I catch sight of my phone - no missed calls - and catch sight of my reflection in the mirror, having stood up. Smudged black eye-liner, crispy hair and stained skin. My teeth are furry and my clothes are so smoke-infused I’m tempted to throw them away. I change into my ‘movie’ clothes, wipe my face with 1-ply toilet paper and try brush the crystallised beer out of my hair. The Three do the same. We work together like an assembly line. I use Angie’s toothpaste to give my teeth a finger brush. Dee Dee borrows my hair brush. Mandy never brushes her hair so ties it into a disorderly bun. Ang borrows my deodorant. Dee Dee, oblivious that I’ve already sprayed myself, tells me to “lift” (in which case I automatically raise my arms) and thoroughly sprays my body with her deodorant. I choke. It’s amazing how one spray, to us, will mask a whole evening of thought-out lies to our parents. And in my case, I need double the amount and conflicting scents to mask my own rubbery scent underneath, - the ball of rubber bands, although considerably smaller, is back in its usual place. Now I don’t mind checking the time. Wimpy will be open soon! We wait until we’re sure it is, and bid our backpackers lodgings farewell.
The four of us sit at Wimpy, starving but only able to order a large plate of chips between us and a cup of coffee each, due to insufficient funds. The waiter gives us a knowing sort of look as if to say “rough night?”. We laugh. We yawn. I look down at my beer-smudged, hand-drawn shoes and smile. We talk all over each other about the time of our lives. We scrape all of our coins together and whatever dirty, crumpled R10 notes we can find. Copper appears on the table like shrapnel. I dig into my backpack looking for lip-ice and pull out a black and white, cut and paste sort of flyer.
Show at Horror Café, Newtown. Two weeks from now.
A tree is cut down for a new seed to be planted.
It started with a piece of paper, and ended with a piece of paper. But an ending marks a beginning, like a circle, which has no beginning and has no end. A mad circle.
