Dragons & Butterflies: Sentenced to Die, Choosing to Live (35 page)

The wiring on our Jacuzzi was not finished, which meant that the building electrician had to have access to the townhouse during the day to work on it, so one or both of us had to stay at home. Seeing that I had drug deliveries to make, Sarah-Lee entertained the electrician. When the job was done, the electrician left, but, during the following days, our electricity box kept tripping whenever the washing machine was running at the same time as the Jacuzzi. We called him back to check what the problem was. As it turned out, he needed to rewire the entire circuit board, which would take another whole day. Sarah-Lee volunteered to stay home and supervise. In fact, she was more than obliging.

I went about my business and left the two of them at home. Later that afternoon, I walked in on them relaxing over a cup of tea. I noticed that Sarah-Lee was unusually chirpy, whereas he seemed to feel a bit uncomfortable about my sudden appearance. Fuck, I thought to myself, here’s an opportunity being handed to me on a platter! The electrician hurriedly jumped to his feet, said his job was done and excused himself. If the board should trip again, he said, all we needed to do was call. I walked him out to his van. I put my arm on his shoulder, thanked him for his work, and enquired how much I owed him. He told me that he was contracted by the owners of the complex and that there was no charge. In my mind, however, I had already devised his fate.

I invited the guy to join us for a braai on the Sunday, which was going to be our house-warming party, with only our immediate family attending. At first he declined my offer. ‘Please,’ I said, ‘I insist. It allows me to show you my appreciation.’ It didn’t take much to convince him, and we shook hands.

Sunday could not have come fast enough for me. Sarah-Lee and her mother prepared the salads and baked potatoes, laid the tables and generally saw to everybody’s needs. I invited the electrician to help me braai. After a couple of beers, I dropped the bomb. Making sure nobody heard me, I murmured under my breath as my girlfriend walked past us. ‘Would you like to fuck her?’ As I pointed to Sarah-Lee’s sexy ass, the look of guilt on the man’s face was something priceless. It was the kind of look rarely captured on camera.

Sarah-Lee was a very beautiful woman. She was slender, bordering on very thin, and she had a great pair of tits. She oozed sensuality. I couldn’t help myself. As the electrician, in a slightly drunken state, began stuttering I just started laughing. To save him further embarrassment, I said, ‘Listen, I don’t blame you, man. She is very fuckable.’ His expression went from bewilderment to one of enquiring interest. I confided that Sarah-Lee and I were actually not happy together, and that I was looking for a way to get out of the relationship. If he wanted her, I told him, he could have her. He looked at me in amazement. As far as I was concerned, the day was turning out to be a huge success.

Everyone enjoyed the lunch and the conversation revolved mostly around politics. Apartheid was in the process of being dismantled. Nelson Mandela and FW de Klerk had jointly been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993, and Mandela was soon to become the first elected black president in our country, democratically voted for by the entire nation. In some views, the future of the white man in South Africa was looking bleak.

I didn’t know it then, of course, but my fate and that of my country were indelibly connected.

Meanwhile my plan was falling beautifully into place. The scene was set for the following evening. I would leave the townhouse around 6pm and return around midnight. This would give the fucking electrician sufficient time to make his move. He would arrive unexpectedly, claiming to be looking for me.

The following day around the agreed time, instead of going on my daily drug deliveries, I went to Burt Reynolds’ place, where I treated him and Goldie Hawn to a couple of grams of cocaine. The occasion called for a celebration. I was about to become a bachelor again.

My plan was foolproof.

I had learnt from my sources that my electrician friend came from a wealthy Afrikaans family and lived in a mansion in an opulent area just outside Joburg. The only thing that turned Sarah-Lee on more than a stiff cock was a man with a permanently fat wallet. I definitely didn’t fit the fat-wallet profile, at least not permanently. Material things had never meant much to me. In her eyes, I was more of a dreamer than anything else, and I had always suspected that she would leave me if something or someone better came along. The thing about drug money is that it is not hard-earned cash. As easily as it is made, spending it or losing it is even easier.

After an evening of heavy freebasing cocaine and drinking with my friends, I was in a stoned, sullen mood. It was well after midnight when I returned to the townhouse where I had left the unsuspecting Sarah-Lee to be seduced by the immoral electrician. I thought that if the seduction failed, the electrician would no doubt confess to Sarah-Lee that it had all been my idea. I was the rogue, he her knight in faded jeans and a shirt that matched his socks. I entered through the garden. Besides the kitchen light, which was on, the rest of the apartment was in darkness. The curtains in the Jacuzzi room were fully drawn, but I couldn’t help noticing that the window panes were all misty and covered with water droplets.

I was a little stunned that it had all been so easy, to be honest. Sarah-Lee and I had not yet made love in our new townhouse and yet this motherfucker had already fucked her and, worst of all, in my Jacuzzi! I reminded myself not to forget to drain the water. I didn’t even bother going to the bedroom. Instead I poured myself a stiff whisky, put on some music and stretched out on the couch. I found myself reminiscing about the times Sarah-Lee and I had spent together and, quite unexpectedly, I felt a sudden sense of loss and pain that left me feeling sick in my gut. After a few more whiskies the tumult of emotion transformed into cynicism and I laughed to myself as tears streamed from my eyes. I was my own worst enemy. On the one hand I yearned for love, while on the other I ran from it. Would I ever break this pattern?

I woke up in the morning still on the couch in the lounge and feeling like shit. It was almost 10am. Where was Sarah-Lee?

I checked the bedroom. The bed was neatly made and there was a note on it for me, informing me that it was over. The only things she wanted, my girlfriend said, were the tumble dryer, our bed and her jewellery. The request was more than fair, I thought. I would have given her those things anyway. I had really put her through hell. For all I knew, she could have left last night. With or without the electrician, my plan had succeeded. I was relieved and sad at the same time. We had been together for almost three years and yet, in spite of having engineered this situation myself, in an instant the world had become a very lonely place.

Fuck, was I beginning to have regrets? Already? Yes, it seemed so.

I phoned Sarah-Lee’s mother’s place. No answer. What the fuck was going on? I was heartbroken. I couldn’t make sense of how I had allowed myself to push her away. This wasn’t a case of when you lose something you realise how important it is to you. My mind was simply fucked up. My head played games … almost as if my mind and heart were in conflict with each other.
Jesus, fuck
. At that moment I seriously contemplated shooting the electrician. That’s how fucked up I was.

That night I managed to get hold of Sarah-Lee’s mom, who was always very polite and friendly towards me. She explained that Sarah-Lee was out (with the electrician) and she expected her home only much later. I figured they had gone to a movie or something and estimated that he would drop her at her mother’s place at anything between 12 and 1.30am. So I parked outside her mother’s townhouse complex, across the road, in the shadows. Around 2am she still hadn’t returned. I was fuming with anger, but I decided I should go home. Tomorrow was another day.

After a sleepless night, with all these images of Sarah-Lee being fucked by the electrician in my Jacuzzi playing over and over in my mind, I found it almost impossible to contain myself. Rounding up a few of the guys, beating the shit out of the unlucky electrician, and then taking Sarah-Lee back should be quite easy, I thought. I took a shower, had a cup of coffee, and took a hit on my cocaine pipe. And then, suddenly, it all became crystal clear. It dawned on me that I was single again, with nobody to answer to and that maybe, just maybe, I was better off without her.

Two of my friends, Pete and Jill, who lived in Norwood, had become concerned about my wellbeing. Although Pete enjoyed the occasional hit on a freebase pipe, there were occasions when they wouldn’t allow me into their house if they had guests. One night I went round to their place and they told me that if I wanted to smoke I should lock myself in the spare bedroom. I had 20g of rocks on me and I binged for two days. At the end of the second day, I was down to my last rock. My pipe was the brass mouthpiece of a trumpet. I scratched out the residue of all the coke I’d smoked, which made up a full tablespoon of resin, and loaded all of it onto the pipe, placing the rock on top. Then, using two lighters, I lit the pipe. First blowing all the air out of my lungs, I inhaled very slowly, sucking in the smoke.

The next thing I knew, my family was there. I had had another seizure. When Pete came home from work, he said he had found me lying on the kitchen floor, with one of his 13 dogs sitting on my chest, licking my face.

I was rushed to the hospital and once again told by the doctors that I was lucky to be alive. If this was not a warning, then I don’t know what it was. Malcolm and Joan were as disappointed as they were concerned, and they insisted I stay with them for a few days and try to clean up my act. They suggested rehab for me, but I declined. I would stop by myself, I told them.

But I was not in control of my life. Far from it.

One morning Joan and I sat talking in her lounge. She told me she thought I should get away from Johannesburg, even if it was just to go on a holiday. She even offered to pay for my ticket.

‘Shaun, this life will kill you. You can’t go on like this,’ she said, taking a tissue and drying her tears. ‘Just get away from it all. Please?’

A few days later, as she was thumbing through the pages of a holiday brochure on the Far East that she’d picked up at a travel agency, she looked up at me and smiled. ‘What about Thailand?’ she said.

I wasn’t all that keen, but that night I lay awake thinking about it, and suddenly it didn’t seem like such a bad idea. Thailand was where my cocaine dealer was buying his heroin. He had asked me several times to join him in his new enterprise of smuggling ‘China White’ – pure heroin – to the United States, but I’d wanted nothing to do with it. Heroin had always seemed like a bad-luck drug to me. Now the situation had changed. I was on my own again and I could certainly do with the extra cash. So the next morning I contacted him, explaining that I was planning to go to Thailand on holiday. If he was still interested, I told him, I was ready to get involved.

As it happened, he said, he was about to set up a deal in Bangkok and was only too happy to hear from me. Over the years we had established a good working relationship and we trusted one another.

Fuck it, I thought to myself, against my better judgement, let me kill two birds with one stone. I was in. This could be the beginning of something big. My share of the deal would be approximately US$15 000.

‘Book my ticket,’ I said to Joan when I got off the phone. ‘I’m going to Thailand.’

My sister was right. This life would kill me.

The Beginning of the Nightmare

It was April 1994, the month in which Thailand celebrated Songkran, the Water Festival. It seemed as good a time as any to take time out from my disintegrating life, to get away from South Africa and to experience another culture. I started my celebrating early by getting drunk on the plane.

It was my first time in Asia, and my initial impressions were a bewildering jumble of sights and smells and noise. Going through Bangkok airport, the place just seemed so foreign to me, although I did notice several Africans entering and exiting the airport building. Once outside, I found a taxi and gave the driver the address I’d been given. He took off into the traffic. The heavy pollution, crowded roads, outdated cars and the sights and smells of different foods being cooked on every corner – I stared in amazement as we drove.