kagablog

Never tell a cop you are innocent. That one doesn’t work. They’ve heard it so many times before, it’s like the inmates of asylums insisting they are sane, no-one is really interested and frankly, it’s quite boring … irritating even.

This thought comes as a retrospect, but at the time I thought it was worth my while to protest my innocence, as I had just been arrested by cops for public drinking when in fact I had moved on to drinking water by that stage of the evening, and I was merely holding my friend’s drink while he went to look for a missing member of our rather inebriated party. Ja, ja.

The scene is the parking lot opposite Roxy’s in Melville. Saturday 10pm. We are perhaps the most elderly party attending the Joburg Burning event, where about 30 bands play at six venues around Melville and shuttles transport the patrons from venue to venue, presumably to prevent them from being arrested for drunken driving. But the cops, who cannot catch the thousands of rapists and murderers running rampant across our country, are hovering around hoping to catch patrons swapping venues with bottles of grog clutched in their pubescent paws. Well done, guys.

I wave the bottle of water in the cop’s face and tell him I’m not drinking, and come on, show a bit of mercy and all that, which angers the righteous constable so much he slaps cuffs on my wrists and accuses me of resisting arrest. I realize that the charges are adding up too fast and climbed into the police Golf, waving goodbye to my by now slightly anxious friends.

Cop number one takes off my cuffs and tells me that I haven’t even apologized. I apologise to all concerned, which is three cops – two in front and one sissie in the back. What’s going to happen to me? You’re going to spend the night in jail and pay a fine in the morning. Will I be spending the night with criminals? No, just other people bust for drinking in public. I ask what else they want to me to do or say and they tell me its best to shut up now. So I shut up.

We’re driving up Beyers Naude past the graveyard when the cops notice the taxi in front of them has something slightly fishy going on inside it. To me, it looks like someone is smoking crack midway along the taxi windows, but I’m not sure if anyone would be that stupid. The cops pull the taxi over and all three of them get out and search the occupants, who start lining up along the sides of the taxi.

No one is paying me any attention, so I start checking the doors. The one next to me has some sort of childlock on it, but the opposite door is open, so I climb out and start walking back along the way we came. Was I being given a gap? Or were the cops just stupid? Or hoping I would just sit there and wait for them? And why didn’t they search me? I could have had a gun for all they knew, and blown their brains out when they returned to the car.

I start walking away all nice and casual, but lose my nerve after about 30 meters and leap the fence into the graveyard, which cost me quite a few cuts across my palms. I start running through the graveyard, which is pretty dark and scary at this hour of night, and begin phoning my friends to pick me up. No one answers for the first five attempts, but eventually they reply and come to pick me up, whooping with joy as if I have won some kind of major victory.

We head for the next venue in time to catch more of the disgustingly un-original, egotistical, if highly competent young rock bands who seem to make up the event. I am laden with shots for my bravery or foolishness, I am not sure which, does it matter to drunken friends? Short of antiseptics, I splash whiskey across my wounds as you see done in any western worth its salt. We roundly condemn the cops for being useless sods who can’t catch a fly and who have become as corrupt as those they are supposed to put away behind bars. Then we watch the music. Some of the party pass out.

I resolve to never watch rock music again, and realize that my spring-driven desire to get wasted with pals on a night on the town has run its course. I walk back to my car, checking out the fences all the way to see how easy they will be to scale if the same cops happen to drive past and recognize me. I’m getting too old for this shit.