Friday night : Jean Barker
`Big, bloody indie beats!” the flier promised. “Dress as your favourite victim and get in for R15 …” sounds just right for Friday 13. My imagination is aroused. I picture strange people, weird conversations, tribal dance, excessive make-up.
Unfortunately, none of my friends are keen to go. So the evening begins with me in a murderous mood trying to decide what to wear. Burn scars and a spare tire around my neck?
No, I need to be mobile. A knife in my right eye could make crossing roads tricky. I reluctantly settle for a long white dress and bloody bite marks on my throat and wrists.
Having a pre-party beer at the Biocafe, I can feel people’s eyes on me. A girl going out on her own is one thing. A girl walking around alone dressed as a budding vampire is quite another. I long to be among my own kind.
But when I get to the Take Four Techno Chainsaw Massacre party a little after 10, I find to my horror that hardly anyone else is dressed up, unless going as a fashion victim counts!
I comfort myself with drinks and arbitrary
conversations while the scene warms up and the DJs, playing techno-grunge, succeed in forcing Capetonians to their feet.
Anti-Gravity get on stage – painted, bandaged, masked and angst-invigorated. A performance artist called Bingo pulls out a chainsaw and waves it around. The aerobics class taking place on the dance floor ends abruptly.
As Antigravity belt out their vicious set, Bingo swings the angle grinder, showering the dance floor with dazzling DIY fireworks.
Out of curiosity, I get talking to him. While we speak, the techno grunge is reinstated. The trendies get back on the dance floor. Time to blow this and go deeper into town.
Caf Camissa is reliably open at three in the morning, and I sit doing a chaotic kind of interview/interrogation over a couple of beers. Bingo tells me one strange story after another.
He has a long, bleeding and very real wound that he picked up when the angle grinder got out of hand. All very cool, but I am beginning to wonder what I’m doing.
Then a woman comes in looking for a lift down to the Parade. She does the early morning shift cleaning up at Heaven after the strip shows finish. We leave her at the desolate taxi rank. The sun hasn’t quite started rising.
The inevitable drunken stop at The Magnet for a game of pool begins badly. A tyre goes down with a hiss as we pull up and I pick up a new skill and a lot of black grease.
It’s empty. I don’t remember music. Suddenly, it’s five in the morning. The staff turf us off the pool table and out the door, drinks still in hand.
In the safety of home, leftover pizza and TV, I complete my evening – there’s nothing quite like infomercials after a long Friday spent with strangers.
Jean Barker is a freelance writer