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6.30.05
Pond Scum: The Shape of Things to Come
By Steve Finbow
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I have just been to a place that wasn’t there. It resembled other places but I could not fix it in my mind. It floated between memory and imagination. Aren’t all places, especially cities, like this? I have just returned from South Africa. The whole time I was there, I could only think of South Africa in terms of other places, other times, be they past or future, real or fictional. Then I realised that’s what we do when we are in a strange place or a foreign country – we attempt to make it a simile of what we know. There is no ‘where’ there. There is only here. Pond Scum is an attempt to analyse, dissect, and contemplate the differences between the United States of America and the United Kingdom. But do I know anything about the USA? Do I really? My knowledge of the USA, actually, let’s face it, my knowledge of most things, is sieved, strained, and stewed through books, be they fiction, poetry, or history. I create a USA in and of my mind. I travel around daily, visit poorly remembered sites, recollect people I barely recognise, but to me it is a fully formed cerebral country.
Art By Nicholas Allanach
So, what is South Africa like? That’s it, that’s what people ask when we return home. What is it like? Well, Johannesburg airport is like any international airport: big, full of uncomfortable seats, miserable immigration people – why do they all wear mirror shades? I was staying in a town 80 miles northwest of Jo’burg. On the ride to the town – and every time I heard its name pronounced it sounded like a different place, I say Vanderbijlpark, you say Vabpk – I couldn’t believe how much it reminded me of California. It is a carworld, with rude motorists, and roadside fires. But whereas California has signs that read ‘Picnic Area 12 miles,’ South Africa has signs that read ‘Hijacking Zone for 12 kilometres.’ As we drove into Vaberprk, I voiced my astonishment at how much it reminded me of Santa Barbara. It is a low-slung town and as boring as poodle shit. It was in this area that Eugene Terreblanche had his power base – he wanted to establish a post-apartheid whites-only enclave in the area. When I was last in Santa Barbara, at the end of each night, police patrols rounded up all the drunks and homeless people, drove them to the city limits, and dumped them out. The homeless and drunks would accept this and, slowly, the next day, make their way back into town. Santa Barbara is also the only place in the world where, in a bar, a guy asked me if I’d like to buy a car. I must add that the salesman had a unique sales pitch – he asked me at gunpoint. In Vdbeprk, steel palisades, topped with electric fences, surround the houses, security guards patrol some, and most houses have Great Danes slobbering at the gate. Although, if any would-be burglar is reading this, I suggest you take a quantity of biltong and bribe the beast – it’s easier than calling off a dog.
What is the food like? Portentous portions, man, Like, humongous. When I lived in New York, my friends and I used to go to the Jackson Hole restaurant, somewhere on Columbus in the eighties if I remember correctly. (Please let me know if I’m wrong because I’m going to be in the city soon and want to go there. Oh, and – apart from correcting my geography – any of you who want a piece of me will have to track me down – I’ll wear a red and white stripy shirt and bobble-hat – we’ll call it Where’s Finbow?) Anyway, the Jackson Hole had the biggest burgers ever in the history of beef. I would order an English burger – with Stilton and bacon – and could never finish it. I used to get a doggie bag and take it home and feed the contents to the nine homeless guys living in my mailbox. If you can’t quite picture the size of the patty, I’d say it was about the size and shape of Norman Mailer’s head. You needed both hands and your girlfriend’s hands to pick it up. Burgers in the UK, made from anorexic anaemic cows, are about the size of Princess Diana’s brain – and I’m talking the size of it these days. So, I’m in a pub/restaurant called Stonehaven in Vnbpk, and I fancy a burger but, because I’m diabetic, I want one without a bun. The medium-size one fits the bill. It’s called a QE1 – no idea why – there is a QE2 but because they are weighed in kilograms and my knowledge of math(s) is about as good as my knowledge of geography, I play safe. I ask for two toppings: monkey gland sauce (don’t ask) and cheese. Six oxen steered by 12 Zulu maidens bring it forth. In the distance, hyenas lift their noses to the sky. Vultures wheel south. Not really but it was fucking huge – two patties laden with glop plus a de trop salad. The patties together looked like two grizzly bears deep in conversation. And this was the smaller version – the other had four patties. Later, I saw the QE2 delivered to an adjacent table. The man who was about to eat it whimpered with fear – I noticed he had come prepared in brown elasticated slacks. I am now slightly addicted to biltong – wind dried and cured meat you slice with a knife – the process of eating it is almost ritualistic, like chewing tobacco but rather than being made from leaves it is made from eland and other cute antelopes. Bambi wouldn’t stand a chance in South Africa, he’d be shot like his mom, strung up to season, quartered, and chewed on before you could say Thumper.
Like LA, Johannesburg sprawls. You need a car to get around. There are some great areas – Melville reminded me of the East Village; Rosebank is a bit like San Luis Obispo; and Parktown North is rather like North Beach. Some parts of Jo’burg have a barely contained nervous energy, bristling and edgy – like the Bronx in the 70s. There’s a tower block called Ponte City – see this month’s Wallpaper magazine for photos. In the 70s, it was the place to live for rich white South Africans. The building has 54 stories, almost 1,000 apartments, and a number of penthouses. It is phallic in shape – when it had a Coca-Cola sign aglandising the top it was even more so; now it has a Vodafone sign making it look like a distended frostbitten elephant’s trunk. It became a slum. Garbage covers the first three floors of the building’s central well. The government is rumoured to want to turn it into a prison – it would make a fantastic panopticon. JG Ballard would love Ponte City and it would have caused Michel Foucault to come in his leather pants.
So, why can’t I see South Africa for what it is? Why use so many similes? I think it’s because South Africa, particularly Jo’burg, reminds me of what I see in America every time I visit: a mixture, and a tense one, of the first world and the third.
Click here to read previous Pond Scum columns.-------------------------------------
Steve Finbow writes out of London, England. He has worked for the poet Allen Ginsberg, the writer Victor Bockris, and the artist Richard Long. His fiction, essays, and short plays appear, or will appear, in Eyeshot, 3am Magazine, Yankee Pot Roast, uber, Locus Novus, InkPot, Dicey Brown, The Guardian Online, and Pindeldyboz. He is currently working on a novel (Yeah, right). He can be contacted here.
© 2005 Me Three
