A friend of mine called me up the other day and said he thought I should check out what smelled like a bit of a racial rat in Chinatown.
His experience went like this: having been introduced to a massage parlour in Chinatown by a friend, and having tried it out, he decided he liked the service, the massage, and so on. As he pays and leaves on this particular occasion, he mentions to the Chinese lady who guards the reception that he would like to introduce his girlfriend to its delights …
”Sure, sure, any time!” she tells him with a wide, toothy, businesslike smile, taking his cash and putting it securely in the till before pressing the button to open the entrance gate to let him out. ”Just come any time,” she repeats, as he steps towards the threshold.
This is where his ears, for some reason, thought they smelled a rat. He thought, as the superstitious and suspicious Macbeth would have said, that he had better ”make assurance double sure”.
”Er … by the way, she’s black, you know,” he told the madame.
Everything in the shop stopped dead. ”No, we can’t do that,” she managed to say. ”Sorry, can’t do black people.”
My friend (who is Jewish, by the way, but passes for white) doesn’t quite remember what he said in response to that, but in response to my prodding later on admitted that the one thing he didn’t ask was: ”Why not?” He was just too flabbergasted, he says.
”Prease, prease, you don’t tell her like that,” said the madame. ”You tell her something else. But no come here.”
My friend, I would guess, staggered out into the sunlight, dazed. It was a wake-up call, I guess. White people just don’t know what it’s like to be on the blunt end of generalised racism, and aren’t used to experiencing the way it comes at you from way out left-field without warning, logic, or even style.
Black people are generally all too familiar with it. Which doesn’t mean you don’t react: sometimes with blind anger, sometimes with Uncle Tom-ish resignation, sometimes with a dangerous, seething determination to work out a slow revenge that seeps like acid through a rope before bringing the sky down on the head of the abuser.
My friend’s girlfriend, when he tried to break the bad news to her gently, responded with anger, but had a practical solution: ”Burn the place down,” she said coldly.
”But, darling, I …” he stammered.
Instead, he called and asked if I didn’t want to check it out. The hell I did, I said. So I phoned and made an appointment. The voice on the other side of the phone was full of smiles and welcomes. Couldn’t wait to see me. Rush on over.
”R120 normal massage,” she said, her teeth virtually gripping the mouthpiece with that commercial grin that I could feel tingling all over my cellphone. ”And R300 special massage,” she said brightly. In answer to my query, she explained that ”special massage” was if you needed ”help”.
I showed up at the gate, looking straight into the waiting area, a row of rather scrawny Chinese girls lounging in tired sofas against the wall immediately to my right, just inside the door. On seeing me, the girls let off muffled screams, shouted something to the lady at the reception desk, and ran to hide in a corner where I couldn’t see them from the street. The Devil, it would seem, was walking in broad daylight in Cyrildene.
The madame was braver — that’s her job. She strode on short legs to the gate.
”Can I herp you?” she asked. She wasn’t smiling much, but when she opened her mouth to speak, I recognised the teeth from the phone.
”Massage,” I said, trying to keep to simple English.
”Here, massage only for Chinese people,” she replied.
”I made an appointment, on the phone,” I said.
”Yes, but I not know you not Chinese. Many kind of Chinese people here — from Hong Kong, Taiwan, mainland. Some Chinese born here, can’t even speak Chinese, sound like South African, like you. But still Chinese.”
I managed to ask the question my friend had failed to ask: ”Why?” says I.
She shrugged. Then she had an improvised brainwave. She went to her reception desk and came back with her business card. ”You can come in if you have a stamp on a card like this,” she said.
”How do I get the card with the stamp on it?” I asked.
”You pay R5 000, you get stamp, you come in,” she retorted.
There is too little space to relate the rest of the exchange, although there wasn’t much of it, since she wasn’t budging anywhere fast.
I left the gate, but hung around a few metres down the road to see what would happen next.
A dull-looking white man in a green Fiat Uno pulled up outside. The gate was buzzed open even before he reached it, and he strolled, cool as cucumber, into the interior. I didn’t bother to hang around and time his stay. I walked away.
My friend says that most of the clientele, every time he’s been there, have been white — male and female. I guess it’s a reversal of the old days, and whites are now honorary Chinese or something.
But I don’t think the solution is to burn the place down. As many darkies as possible should show up and politely ask for massages, till the headache reaches saturation point for the terror-stricken Chinese chicks inside. The address is A25 Derrick Avenue, Cyrildene. Don’t start fights. Be nice. Then walk away.
Gong qi fa chai. (Happy Year of the Pig).