Prepare for a party night that courses from Soweto to the Joburg CBD as Tshidiso Moletsane’s explosive novel serves shots of sex, drugs and anxiety while tearing into life, death, race and politics.
“THE SOUTHERN LIGHTS ARE STILL DANCING ABOVE ME. The rain against the metal train carriages sounds like applause. The mob is almost on me now. One of the dudes on the ground manages to grab my arm and starts dragging me down. He’s having a hard time because he’s overweight and out of breath. Ari flies onto my chest and cackles. He says, ‘You were never really serious, kid. You don’t care about anything. You came into this life as if you were stepping into a swimming pool. You never could quite discern between freedom and folly.’ Ari and I laugh together. I tell Ari that may be so but I’m going out like a champion. Ari tells me that I am a strip club in a church, I am an orgy at a funeral, a hanging in a temple, a priest with no god.
George Carlin said the quality and depth of your thoughts are only as good as the quality and depth of your vocabulary. Mine is pretty decent but my thoughts are shit.
They tell us that the best things in life are free but no one tells us the worst things are too. I think everyone should stop teasing and just drop their nukes so we can get it over with. The politicians, the police, the army: burn it all down, scorch the Earth. They serve no one. I think trans and gay people aren’t hurting anyone. I think prostitutes are providing perfectly legitimate services. I think we get too high and too drunk because reality is awfully tiresome.
“At nine years old, I had faced death and reconciled the idea of my own mortality.”
I think we make art for the same reason. I think I’m a terrible person. I used to think several meant at least seven but now I think the word is intentionally misleading. I think we should legalise euthanasia, but, like, for old folks and people who are severely crippled. Earlier I think I said helping depressed folks check out was a good idea but probably not, right? I think my madness gets ahead of me sometimes. I realise my relationship with death is unusual. I only remember crying once at a funeral and I was five so it doesn’t count. Typically, I don’t view someone’s passing as tragic because death is just something that happens, like winter or divorce.
My father is the biggest Tupac fan I know. My dad would be washing his car outside or cleaning the house playing any Tupac song you can think of, from the most popular to the most obscure. I could recite the lyrics to most of his songs by the time I was eight. He seemed to discuss death a lot in his music, whether his or that of a close friend. And I’d listen to his music incessantly. At nine years old, I too felt that the good die young, I too wanted a place in thugz mansion; I also wanted my friends and family to bury me smiling with money in my pockets. At nine years old, I had faced death and reconciled the idea of my own mortality.
I think I would’ve turned out better if I’d had an older sibling to look out for me because my parents weren’t able to. I think you should never tell a girl how you feel about her when you’re drinking. I think none of this matters but I’ve probably said this already.”
Extracted from Junx by Tshidiso Moletsane, out now.
