The Hillbrow I remember

The Hillbrow I remember
is different from the one you remember
the one you know now

I had a job at the blood bank my mother worked
at the National Blood Transfusion Service
just off Pretoria Street opposite the BP garage

She was a technician in a department of two
her colleague was this cool chinese gay guy
called Stanley

They did tests on blood and stuff

And then she became a doctor
but before that I got a holiday job just out of matric
working upstairs I can’t recall the name

Of the department but we spent the whole day

Labelling test tubes and putting them in trays
taking them out of fridges
putting them back in fridges, pretty important

Some afternoons we would go down to the bar on Pretoria Street
the Arcade and drink there our boss Vivian was an alcoholic at
least that is what my mom said I worked with her son Ben
and we got drunk plenty

Some evenings particularly Friday evenings we would stay after work
and have these parties in the office on the fifth floor I think
anyway it was the top floor and Vivian used to drink vodka there was

Always vodka I remember dropping a beer over the balcony
it missed some guy on the sidewalk and we laughed

There was a girl called Christelle
who worked with us
she was our age she was cute she was afrikaans and she loved Ben

At one of these parties she got so drunk she threw up everywhere
and I took her to the bathroom she threw up all over me
and we were sitting there on the cold tiled floor, just inside the ladies
and she was crying and I was holding her my hands on her back  

And all she kept saying is I want Ben I want Ben but Ben
wasn’t there I was there but that is just the way of things sometimes

Before all of this I remember catching the bus into Hillbrow from Westridge
along ontdekkers we would go to the Pretoria Street Arcade Look $ Listen
and flip through the tons of cds, and listen, and walk the arcade the tattoo

artists, we would shop the second hand clothes outlets and there was this
one place that had this giant wooden tub filled with t-shirts

I bought a purple ripcurl and a billabong t-shirt
I can’t remember what colour it was but I wore it later that afternoon when
we got back to roodepoort on the bus playing tennis ball
soccer on the highschool sports field

It was a year later and I had flunked out of Wits, I think I was going to be a
physicist I don’t know what I was thinking
but I’m still into quantum when I told them in the admin office in some part
of the admin building that May that I wanted to be a writer

They showed me the curriculum but I couldn’t see anything really that was
going to help me my father was going to shoot the roof I was on a student
loan they just took my student card and cut it in two

That was a pretty shitty day to be honest

I stayed at home for the next few months listening to James
albums I borrowed from chris and smoking marijuana
and trying to write poetry until my mother
got me a full time job at the blood bank as a donor assistant

I was the only boy on the team of young and pretty girls and
women and some of them were so cute, and I was in love with all of them
our job was helping donors after the sisters
stuck the needles in

we would make them feel comfortable lying on these metal frame beds
with their blue and maroon plastic cushions and when the bags started
to get full we would pull the needles out put some cotton
wool on the wound pull the tube tight where a loose knot

Had already been tied and then snip the needle off into a
medical waste bucket I got needle stick injuries
three times in four months and had to go for HIV tests, every month for
six months even after I left but all I can remember and cared for
were those beautiful women and the fact
that I was the only boy                   

I wrote the lyrics for a counting crows song
I can’t remember which one for a girl on the back of a donor sheet
on the same day I walked down to small street mall, through the noord
street taxi rank to buy myself a new pair of 10 hole oxblood doctor
martins from moolas I thought of her the whole way   

It was years later that I made my way to Hillbrow again in the back
of russell’s beetle with chris we were so stoned we were looking
for blowjobs so a whore in other words

And I wasn’t even sure if we were serious, and even with the three
of us all in the car we were all obviously
just along for the ride but it got very serious very quickly

These fucking punks they pulled up outside a block
of flats tenement apartments
and there were these three mamas outside leaning against the low
wall leading up the short stairs to the door under a yellow lightbulb

They made me get out the back of the beetle through the
bent forward front passenger seat laughing all the while
and approach these ladies and they were silhouetted
against the light and I couldn’t see them

And I didn’t even know what to say

A halfhour later there was a crackwhore in the frontpassenger seat
and chris was in the back and russell was driving and she was
A young girl older than us, but old looking
very sharp and skinny all edges and bone

with a hard look and a harder talk, and there was just something
about her that didn’t look right to me I’m sorry that I have to say

That but I am not and she said if we could get her some crack she
would suck us all off and at first it was funny but then it was not

We had stopped by some guys she knew, and somehow she had
the crack but now she needed a pipe and we had started arguing
and I didn’t like the look of her and I couldn’t imagine those lips
around my cock and I was still a virgin for fucksakes

And none of this was serious anyway I was shouting at her to get
out the fucking car and we had circled Hillbrow like three times
and came to the BP garage again I think someone actually threw

a crackpipe that bounced off a closing window and then said the
cops are behind you and I yelled what cops the fucking cops

Are after you motherfucker but the cops were behind and we
finally got her out of the car at the top of Hillbrow by the park
There it was about 2am and she took the crack with her and

The cops stopped us just after we left Hillbrow they were special
branch they were in an unmarked vehicle I remember the next
part very clearly

They had pulled in front of us after passing us and waving their
torches at us and chris was in the front looking back at me
shouting get rid of the dope get rid of the dope, we had brought

the whole bucket with us there were two full jiffy bags of swazi
from Paulas in Vrededorp the way they used to pack it full and
staple the tops of the plastic bags closed and I was

I can’t even remember I was

reaching for the bags I had one bag I was trying
to stuff one bag down my woolen hiking socks, the only thing
I could think the only place I could think

And there’s this coloured guy this big fucking coloured guy
he’s got a gun up and pointing through the windshield and
he’s shouting your hands your hands your hands

The guy in the back and I say the only words
that come into my mouth Im tying my docs, Im tying my docs
!

two guys had come around the side of the car and russell the
driver is out the car and against the door and the other guy is
reaching to chris and I think the conversation

is then that we just surrender and give them everything we got there are even
weapons in the car

a baseball bat with fucking swastikas gouged into the wood, along the crown
this was fucking ryan and all other kinds of karate shit
the cosh russell keeps from the time
boneheads ran us off the road after we swore at them
coming back from cresta         

If you can believe this those cops were actually pretty
chill after they had taken a good look at us and found

The tin the large biscuit tin of ‘marijuanaparaphenalia’
the one bag of marijuana and the bullshit arsenal of assorted boyhood dream

the big coloured who was the team leader by behaviour was showing us how
to properly use the bat with a shortarm swing for maximum affectiveness they
were looking for crack cocaine and they didn’t find any

and they fucking laughed but they told us fucking straight stay out of Hillbrow

Before they left Russell approached them and asked if
he could have his one dope pipe back as it had sentimental value
and they looked at him as if he was fucking crazy
but it was ballsy and it worked

and before they got back in their car I was in the backseat the whole time the
big coloured guy took a look back at me and said tying your fucking doc
tying your fucking doc you crazy fucking fuck and then they were gone and

we looked at each other and we laughed a crazy fucking laugh that you’ll
only ever know if you’ve laughed it, plus we had the one bag of marijuana

still and russell’s pipe that had sentimental value we laughed all the way
back to roodepoort I don’t think I went to hillbrow again after that

but I remember Hillbrow
although not perhaps
in the way you know it now
or remember it.