Fuck The Pope But Use A Condom (Pt. 5)

Opening Night … Specters of the Past … A Glorious Disaster. by Johann Naudé

In the months leading up to this momentous evening, I had spent a fair bit of time trying to envisage how it might go wrong—you know, by looking at everyone involved (the cast, the crew, the critics, the audience) and trying to imagine how they might react to this or that or, in the case of the cast and crew (especially Dracula Dave and grease-mane Harry), how they could fuck the whole thing up.

I did so to prevent the trouble I could and, at the bare butt minimum, brace for the trouble I couldn’t. Premeditatio malorum, the Stoics called it—the premeditation of evils.

Despite these altogether fruitful efforts, however, I’m not embarrassed to admit that I failed spectacularly in anticipating the outcome of this evening. For one, I did not foresee that, merely minutes before opening curtain, I’d be kibitzing with Heidi. Yes, Heidi. Looney-Tunes Heidi.

This unfortunate encounter was precipitated by my having to run down to the lobby to hand over tickets to Yvonne, who had been unable to fetch them from me that afternoon. We were an item now, by the way—Yvonne and I.

After we had parted ways that Friday evening at Crazy Joe’s, we didn’t speak for about a week. I was too busy working on the play, and experience had taught me that, in defeat, the best way forward is oftentimes retreat. And so it proved to be. She texted me the following weekend, saying she wanted to meet up. Needless to say, I played my cards right. None of the defensive lunacy of the previous weekend. No, sir, I played it cool. Casually told her about my play and also dropped the fact that I had been tested for HIV a few days before. She was mightily impressed.

Now, on opening night, I found her waiting for me in the theater’s lobby, looking sultry as hell. Handing her the tickets—one for her, one for Annette, who had the good sense to skulk a few meters off—I said, “Am I seeing you afterward?”

Grinning cheekily, she said, “Well, it depends on how good it is.”

“Oh, it’s going to be good alright!” I said, pulling her in for a kiss. And it was then, just as I was about to smooch her, that a large, blurry shape entered my field of vision and, zeroing in on this evolutionary red flag, I noticed Heidi emerging from the throng of wine-sipping patrons with a look of delighted wonder on her face.

“Vicar of Christ,” I said, letting go of Yvonne.

She turned to see what had spooked me and, latching her gaze onto Heidi’s goofy expression, said, “Who is that?”

“Heidi,” I said.

“The Heidi?”

“Yeah.”

“Oooh,” she said, and turned back to me. “She’s not going to be happy with the show. But, listen here,”—she squeezed my hand—“Annette and I are going to get drinks, so—good luck!” She pecked me on the cheek. “See you later!”

She turned on her heel and took off, chuckling merrily at Heidi as the latter sneered at her.

Heidi swiftly reassumed her former goofy self and, while apparently operating under the outlandish impression that we were going to hug, judging by the way she approached me with open arms, squealed, “Dixon! So good to—what the—”

I had halted her progress with a stiff right arm.

“What the hell are you doing here?” I hissed.

“I came to see your play, of course! Why—”

“And that’s all, eh? Just came to see my play? Not to make a scene, perhaps? How did you even find out about it? You don’t really strike me as the theater type.”

“My flatmate mentioned it.”

I froze.

“Your flatmate?”

“Yes. She wanted to see it, and when I saw your name on the poster, I thought, well, that should be interesting. I can’t say I like the title, though. It’s offensive.”

In hindsight, I can’t say I’m surprised that Layla was gripped by our marketing attempts. The blurbs and posters had been imparted with just the right amount of vagueness for her to conceivably—and mercifully—have believed that the story would be one that she could relate to, that it was written just for her, but not about her.

“Yes, well,” I said, scanning the crowd for Layla’s face, “I find Joseph Ratzinger’s views on condom use offensive.¹ Tell me, where’s your flatmate?”

“In the bathroom,” she replied. “Who is Joseph Ratzinger?”

“The Pope,” I said, terminating my search. “Well, listen here, this has been a blast, but I must go get ready. Enjoy the show!”

I wheeled around and started back up the stairs.

“I will!” she said after me. “And good luck! Let’s meet afterward?”

“Would’ve loved to! But, alas,” I said, pointing a jiggling finger upwards, “I have other plans already!”

“With that girl?”

“Yes!”

“Let’s do it another time, then! She doesn’t have to know!”

“No, but I’ll have to!”

* * *

I don’t know if you noticed, but I was quite a bit more discombobulated by the news that Layla would be in the audience than I was by the same bit of nastiness about Heidi.

This was for two reasons: one, and this may come as somewhat of a surprise to you, but I sort of felt bad about embroiling her in my machinations. She was a nice girl, after all, and I didn’t wish her any further suffering, which would obviously be the outcome if she watched the play. I mean, how would you feel about paying good money to see the most embarrassing episode of your love life re-enacted onstage? A lot of things, I imagine, and none of them good.

One of the things you might feel—and this brings me to my second point—is a desire for revenge. I was worried that she might want to get back at me.

Now, I know what you’re thinking: wait but … what about Heidi? Might she not also want to get back at you? And was it not much more likely, given her monstrous personality? To which I’d say, yes, you’re perfectly right, but you need to keep one thing in mind: she no longer had any sway over me. All of the dirt she imagined she had on me (from my singular instance of premature ejaculation to her ridiculous views on the size of my apparatus) was out in the open now—in my play—and thus could no longer be used as kompromat, if it ever could have been to begin with. I mean, Yvonne for one didn’t mind any of it. She considered it all the height of hilarity.

The same could not be said of the dirt that Layla had on me, however—or, to put it more accurately, the dirt that she was about to have on me.

See, by her coming to watch the play, she would discover all of the meaningful ways in which I had distorted the second-to-last scene—you know, the one in which I’m trying to convince her (played by Cecille Schoeman, who I was fornicating with on the side) to let me give her a lift home. And if, as a result of viewing this scene, she felt an intense urge to take revenge, she might very well sit up and think: that’s it! That’s how I’m going to get him! I’m going to tell the world what really happened that evening.

Now, to be clear, after reflecting on the matter a bit more on my way to the green room, I deemed the outcome unlikely. Her personality, in my estimation, didn’t allow for it. She was too soft, too self-effacing, more likely to be consumed by her own pain than the pain that she could exact on me. No, I thought, as I took a deep, life-affirming breath and admired my handsome skull in the mirror, I’ll be fine.

Conceive my emotion, then, dear readers, when, later that night, during this very scene I just mentioned, and after a blemish-free performance otherwise, someone violently kicked open one of the doors at the back of the house.

Jesus Christ, I thought, she’s gone off her rocker!

I kept my wits about me, however, stayed in character, and didn’t look towards the door, because if it really had been Layla, she was gone now, and we wouldn’t hear from her again (at least not that evening). Everyone else also stayed in character: Cecille, following the briefest of halts, finished her line; Tommaso, who played Daniel, continued his rendition of Pavane pour une infante défunte; and Simon, who played Pierre, remained on the floor, near the piano, with the same grave, thoughtful expression on his face. Only the patrons, whose movements I could observe out of the corner of my eye, had swung around to investigate.

A moment later, however, when, from that very spot beneath the balcony where the door had been kicked open, a man thundered “You fucker!”, I knew at once that I had misread the situation. It wasn’t Layla who had disrupted our peace. It had been this guy. And in the wake of his you-fucker-ing, we could no longer remain so calm.

Tommaso flubbed a note (but, to his credit, soldiered on), while the rest of us turned to face the intruder, who, at that point, was little more than a distant silhouette with a red EXIT sign above his head. He was closing in on us, however, coming down the aisle, and thundering all the while: “I trusted you! I confided in you! And you do this?”

And as he said “this?”, he moved out from underneath the balcony, into the ghostly pale-blue light beyond it, and I was able to discern his features.

It was Daniel.

To this day, I don’t know how he found out about the play, and why he chose this most extraordinary time and place to air his grievances about it, but my best guess is that a friend or acquaintance was in the audience and slipped him the news via a text. He then dropped whatever he was busy with and, while evidently growing into the sort of rage that ought to cause local policeman to sit up and take notice, raced down to the theater.

Whatever the case may be, I was stunned to see him there. I had, as I explained earlier, done my utmost to imagine all the ways in which this evening could go south, but not even in my most creative of moods did I conjecture something as preposterous as this. My worst fear about the man had been that he might accost me late at night, outside my home, where nobody could see him—not in a fucking theater.

All the same, there he was, coming down the aisle like a bloodthirsty gladiator. He must’ve been in one of those blinding rages, which would explain why he pitched up in the first place—it blinded him to all other considerations. But this doesn’t matter. What mattered was that he was there, he was in a rage, and he was closing in on me, which, to a sensible mind like my own, meant I had to act—and act quickly.

I didn’t feel the urge at once, though. At first, I was simply shocked and said something like “What the …” in a torpid sort of way (Cecille proceeded to hiss, “Who’s that?”); but then, as he moved further down the aisle, and I could more clearly apprehend his rage, I began to sense that he wouldn’t conclude his trip until he could comment on the color of my eyes, which seemed like a scenario to avoid. So, without further delay, I stepped forward and, opening my arms in a conciliatory manner, said, “Daniel, old boy.”

In retrospect, “old boy” was probably not the mot juste, because he responded by yelling “Fuck your old boy!” and making a dash for the stage.

“Sorry, old boy!” I yelled. “But you need to calm down!”

“Fuck you!”

“The story had to get out! It’s for the greater good! It might save people!”

By now, he was clambering onto the stage and I considered scramming, but a quick cost-benefit analysis suggested that this would be a mistake. I’d lose too much face. I mean to say, if the auditorium had been empty, I would’ve been halfway up Table Mountain by now. But with things the way they were—with Yvonne and the who’s who of Cape Town in the crowd—I’d simply have to stand my ground, or at least crab-walk a few meters to the left to get the piano between us, in the hope that either Tommaso or Simon would take him down before he got to me.

A naive hope, as it turned out. These two cowards did absolutely nothing to stop him. While Daniel was clambering onto the stage, Simon got up from the floor and backed up to protect his own ass (as though he thought he was important enough to be in danger), while Tommaso, who, for whatever perverse artistic reason, had continued playing Ravel up to that point, simply turned his head.

I, meanwhile, kept trying to subdue the flames: “Calm down, old boy! Calm down!”

But it was to no avail. If anything, it spurred him on even more. As he passed the piano, a hellish glint entered his eyes, and that’s when I began to brace myself for impact by shifting my right foot back a touch and squatting a little to get a stronger base. I also raised my hands to chest height.

After he had discharged one more nasty jibe (“You fucking cunt!”), we clashed. He probably would’ve wanted to take a whack at me from the start, but I suspect he noticed the easy athleticism of my stance (I used to be a pro cricketer, after all) and realized that such a bold opening statement would get him nowhere. So he came at me like an amateur wrestler—tried to get hold of my upper body and topple me. I did the same. And as we were grappling, he resumed laying verbal abuse on me. Told me he was going to kill me, among other bizarre things, to which I just kept saying, “Calm down, old boy! Calm down! Calm down!”

But then I thought of something a little more eloquent: a quote from Hamlet. I had discovered it a few days earlier and thought it would go down well in interviews. Now seemed as good a time as ever to impress with it. “Remember what Hamlet said, old boy! ‘The play’s the thing wherein I’ll—aaargh!’”

The bugger had gotten in underneath me: ducked, hooked his arms around my legs, lifted me high up into the air, then brought me down onto my back. And when I say he “brought me down onto my back”, don’t go running off with the idea that he lowered me to the floor like a family heirloom. No, he drove me into the earth with everything he had, knocking the wind out of me. Then, as I groaned in pain, and Cecille screamed “Stop it! Stop it! Stop it!”, he mounted me like a broncobuster and, finding a gap in my compromised defenses, clocked me a big one on the jaw. Then he hit me again, this time on the nose, shattering it.

I don’t remember much of what happened next—life had become rather fuzzy, as you might imagine—but witnesses who hadn’t been punched in the face informed me that, just as he was about to strike me again, Cecille, who had been edging closer, grabbed his arm and held him back heroically.

Her cowardly co-stars then came to her aid and, between the three of them, removed the maniac from my vitals. As Cecille came to tend to me, Simon and Tommaso restrained him a while longer. When they eventually released him, Tommaso said, “You’re Daniel, right?”

Daniel nodded, while apparently still giving me the eye.

“How did it go with the test?”

I mean, what a ridiculous thing to ask! Then again, on the day I met him, this Italian emigre asked me for Daniel’s home address. Why? So he could go interview the man … “to get to the root of his being”. I goddamn nearly puked!

Daniel savored the sight of my bloody face a moment longer, then turned on his heel and walked off the stage. As he did so, he grunted, “It doesn’t matter. It shouldn’t matter.”

The O-mouthed stage manager watched him pass, then got a grip on her sweaty self and ordered the curtain to come down. And as this wall of black dropped into place, dear reader, something truly astonishing happened, something that, if you’re not familiar with this story already, will likely surprise you as much as it did me. A man in the front row burst into applause—loud, confident, raucous applause. Can you believe it? There was evidently not a doubt in his mind that what he had just witnessed was, to quote Jacques Stevens of the Table Bay Herald, a “meta masterpiece”. But it didn’t end there, because soon the rest of the mob joined in and, once the outline of a consensus had formed, the shouting began: “Whoooooooooo!” “Bravooooo!” “Brilliant!”

The effect this had on me was astounding. I shot up like a jack-in-the-box and hurried everyone off the stage so that we could do a curtain call. When it lifted, I, bloody-faced and crooked-nosed—but beaming—led the procession back out into the bright, wondrous lights.

The crowd roared when they saw me. I lifted my left arm triumphantly and, after letting it tower up there for a moment, fell into a dramatic bow. I curled back up into the vertical before collapsing into yet another bow. Then I thanked the rest of the cast with a sidelong flourish, after which we grabbed hands and bowed together.

Then, as we rose out of this bow and just stood there, gazing out over the fluttering sea of beaming faces, I spotted a slender, dark-haired woman scurrying up the aisle towards the same door at the back through which Daniel had entered a few minutes earlier.

Then we bowed again.