So last Sunday was a treat. Well I'll say it was last Sunday for the sake of this post.
I woke up to a phone call from my mate Tyler. He had a concert ticket for that Matthew Mole guy and was willing to sell it to me for cheap. Anyone who knows me will tell you that I'll hop over a thousand islands at the prospect of watching some live music. It was at Makaranga so that wouldn't be too unpleasant either - the place is like the Garden of Eden, if it was taken over by a hospitality company. It's fantastic there and I needed some fantastic feels. We managed to organise Ben a ticket too which was a stroke of genius and luck because none of this debauchery would've been as great without him.
See what happened was this. The plan was for us to leave at 12, even though the concert started at 12. We would go down with Tyler, his girlfriend Caro and good ol' Msizi Hadebe was there too so it was going to be a boss time for us all. Well being the guys we were, Ben and I decided to go off and get some beers for the journey. Makaranga isn't the cheapest place in the world so it made sense to go there feeling a little buzzed. Haha and that was our mistake. It was barely past 11am and there we were in the queue at Tops, quartz in hand, ready to drink the day away like a bunch of alcoholics. I'm sure anyone who saw us would've thought that's exactly what we were. I guess in a sense, on that day, you could get away with saying that.
We raced off to the meet up point with Tyler and barely 2 seconds after being in the car we'd started making our way through the first of our beers. Being day drunk is something I'm sure most of us are accustomed to. We've all been to festivals where the first thing you have to rehydrate yourself after a long night is a beer. You're out of milk so you use beer to get through your cereal. Oh look, your teeth need brushing so you quickly use your Black Label to help you out, it's a common thing out there in the mountains. I know people who survived solely on Black Label for a full week and functioned perfectly well. The biggest problem here was that we weren't in the mountains. We weren't at a festival. Where we were was in the suburbs of the Upper Highway area where lots of families were coming out for a casual Sunday afternoon hang as it became clearly evident to us as we stammered up to the serpentine queue of people waiting to get in the gates. When you're in normal civilization, you have to maintain if you want to be day drunk and so Ben and I put our best feet forward.
There was absolutely no way in hell I was going to go wait at the back of the line. I still can't tell you where it ended because after it dipped down the hill and bent itself once or twice around a few corners, I lost interest. Luckily we found someone we knew reasonably close to the front and just kinda wedged ourselves in with their party as if we'd been there the whole time. A bit of dutch courage in our bones and we'll make anything look natural. The first thing Ben decides we need to do is get beers and so off to the bar we went. The wisest decision for us was to get a bucket full of beers so we could lounge around on the grass and not have to move again. The whole point of us being there was to enjoy the music and have a good time, not get wasted in front of these poor people with their families, right?
Haha well to cut a long story short, my card got declined by the card machine because so many people were on the server so we had to go across the road to Maytime and find an ATM and by now I was feeling the effects of those downed quartz quite well. There's this thing that happens to me where if I get inebriated, so do all my devices. I tried to use the ATM and it gave me bat, claiming I had no cash, which was a lie because I'd just been paid and I was feeling mad rich. I was flipping Donald Trump on these hoes and this thing is telling me I'm suddenly a pauper, lies. Tried calling the bank but my phone wouldn't work either, it too was feeling day drank and so after an hour of waiting, I finally got the ATM to work and we were able to get our beers, lie down and listen to music. Not quite.
We went to listen to music alright, we'd found Tyler where we'd left him and Caro to get us a spot near the front and we settled ourselves in before the hordes of young parents and their toddlers could rain in and take it from us. The amount of young people there was quite astounding. I usually don't feel like the oldest person in the room when I go to most places and usually I'm not but here I was, teetering on the edge of being ancient around a bunch of knee-high grasshoppers. I even knocked over a little baby in my haste to catch up to a girl I was meaning to chat up from months ago.
That's another thing that was there in abundance; girls. There were so many girls there and quite a few that I knew. Granted most of them were just hitting 18 and with their mommys and daddys but the ones I knew were in the safe zone and that's where I stayed. After a few beers you tend to forget that there are some girls that are off limits. Mostly friends of your ex, even if they've suddenly become just about everything you find attractive in a woman at the moment, they're a no go. Tell that to drunk Msizi. My flirt game was on level 9000 and I'd be lying if I said it stopped with her. Nope, I think I flirted and got cellphone numbers of nearly every girl within a mile's radius of me who was over the legal age. Right now my phone book is full of numbers of girls I don't even know and that first week back into reality was just about me finding a way to ignore these people as efficiently as I possibly could. My dignity was like, "Hey, let's not do this" and drunk Msizi would be like, "Ok, but watch this..." In all this I wasn't alone though. Ben and Msizi were just as active as I was and I think between the three of us, we can compile a phonebook of every girl in the Upper Highway area. I had no other intentions besides just stroking my ego. There's nothing I enjoy more than a good bit of flirting and whatever reward that comes, be it in the form of a hook up or even several, is pay for a job well done.
I can't remember what time we left or what really went on in there but I can tell you I had a fantastic time. There are so many pictures taken from there and in every one of them I was having the time of my life. The day drunkness had a tight hold of me and after we left I decided to calm down and pace myself, it was barely 4pm, the night was young. Haha but when you're being day drunk with other people, it's not really your choice. From there we drove to Mkhulu's Tavern, a tavern in the township that I've never been to but all my friends had. I was impressed. It was pretty boss in there and we got more beers and I'm pretty certain I got the cashier's phone number too, I was insatiable. It probably helped that she knew my friends but still. I was content with going home and just having a quiet night in with my friends and a few drinks.
But that doesn't happen in the real world. No it doesn't but I feel like maybe that's a post for another day. So much happened that day and that night that I have a thousand life lessons to take away from it. Basically what happened after that is we ended up hanging out with some people closer to our age on the rooftop of a hotel overlooking the Durban beachfront at night and for me, that's when I realised I was just done with cake lighties. I'd spent the last few hours speaking to young girls and as fun as that may be, they weren't as stimulating as the ones I was now doing somewhat illegal things with. I must say I'm a million times more grateful for that bit of realisation than any other. I know age is but a number, something I said quite a few times later that week when a band of milfs came sniffing me out and it's true but it does play a part too. With age comes maturity and that's something I saw quite clearly in the space of a few hours.
