Hell in the Heavens (Part II)

Well, tickle my testicles and call me Nancy. Who could have guessed that a story about an anonymous idiot annoying me forty thousand feet above the ground could garner so much attention? Due to the sheer number and frightening intensity of emails I have received initially requesting, and then demanding that I finish this story, I feel it’s only fair that I preface this post with an apology.

Somewhere along the way, some readers of this blog have gotten the idea that I am interested in what they think. It must have been something I said, and I sincerely apologise for misleading you. The truth is it’s not so much that I’m not interested in what you think, as I don’t give half a damn. Now I know what you’re thinking (because you’ve emailed it to me every waking hour of my life since I started this blog), well, isn’t this guy just as arrogant a prick as ever there was in the history of pricks. And arrogance. My reply to that is: practice, practice, practice. One day you too might become as awesome a human being as I am and then have reason to be arrogant.

People make me so mad. I made it quite clear when I began this blog that there are only two sets of opinions that matter in the world: mine, and those of anyone who pays me a substantial amount of cash. So those that have sent money into my account, please share your views and comments. The rest of you can feel free to shut your faces. And while we’re on the subject of voluntary donations and shutting faces, the last time I checked my bank account the number of people who had wired money to me was roughly… zero. So guess who now has my official permission to shut the hell up? You’re welcome.

Anyway, I think I should explain my absence only because I fear if I don’t I may keep getting annoying, time-wasting emails. The reason I’ve not been updating regularly is that I was being a true black-blooded patriot, a son of the soil as they say, by drafting my own clauses that I think should be included in the new Zimbabwean constitution we are working toward. For example, one of the items I am going to put forward is a recommendation that we change our president after one term, or when he starts to look like a piece of biltong, whichever comes soonest. I remember watching a certain president of a certain African country (I daren’t say his name) on TV campaigning to be re-elected last year, and I didn’t want to vote for him so much as I wanted to cut him up into little pieces and serve him on a platter with ice cold beers at my next braai. With impressive suggestions such as these, you can rest assured that us Zimbabweans who are still in the trenches are going to deliver a concrete, people-driven, forward-looking law of the land for you yellow-bellied prodigal sons in the Diaspora. No thanks necessary; really, it’s our pleasure.

And then, there was this whole business of Michael Jackson dying on us. And our President didn’t even declare a state of emergency. I’ve been a fan of Michael Jackson from the time he was a cute little black boy right up to his death as a hideous crazy white woman. I needed some time to grieve.

Now, to finish off my tale of woe. So, I’m sitting in this plane trying not to scream and bash my head against the window until it breaks or I die, with the latter being the preferred option in the circumstance. I watch Asshole approaching with that frozen smile you get when you realize that what you thought was just a fart you were going to silently deploy is in fact something slightly wetter than a regular fart. And a little bit smellier.
I’m trying my best to wipe the smile off my face but I can’t. He smiles back. He scans the overhead bins for space to put his oversize hand luggage. I say three quick prayers in the hope that he won’t find space. One prayer to God. One to Allah. And I cc: a prayer to all other deities known and unknown. But the Devil is quick, if you didn’t know. He came floating down the aisle disguised as a butt-ugly forty-something year-old flight attendant to Asshole’s assistance. What the hell happened to airlines, don’t they discriminate anymore? Is there not enough space, sir? she says. Here, let me take your bag, I’ll put it up front there’s space there. Go ahead and take your seat.

What?

Bitch. I thought we were supposed to keep our luggage near us at all times. All times! But I guess the spawn of Satan get special treatment on certain SAA flights.

He sits down next to me, takes a moment to buckle his fat belly in, and then turns to me looking like the cat that got the cream.

“Boss,” he says, irritating me no end with the first word out of his mouth. I don’t know, Zimbabwean men have taken to calling each other “boss” a lot lately, a trend I don’t at all understand, since most of them are not and have never been the boss of anything. What’s wrong with “bro”? Or even “ekse”? “I haven’t see you in so long man, are you still in business? What are you doing boss?”

I open my mouth to answer, but I guess in some cultures that’s a signal for the other person to speak some more.

“Boss, you wasted your time all these years in Zim boss. The States is where it’s at. People made crazy money, not this Mickey Mouse money ya’ll was making here.” Yes, he actually spoke like that. Since I left America, I’ve not heard anyone actually talk like that. Ya’ll was..? So now I can feel my blood pressure rising in my eyeballs. This guy hasn’t seen me in years, has no clue what I’ve been doing, but has the temerity to immediately conclude that I’ve been making Mickey Mouse money. I don’t know how much that is, but the derogatory tone of his voice informs me without further explanation that it is certainly not a lot.

“Well,” I say, “you know how Zim is, man. We’re struggling to survive…”

“See,” he interjects, “that’s the problem with you black people. Always jus tryna survive. S’why we don’t never become shit. I was doing my thang in the States, boss, we was making money, till this damn recession started. You wanna know what we were doing?” This far in the conversation I was smart enough to know that that question did not require an answer, so I kept quiet. “You know, we were simply taking out loans to build houses. After building a house, it’s immediately worth twice what you spent to build it! So we would talk to the lenders, the builders, the appraisers, and after doing the deal, everyone would take their cut once the house was sold. We made sick money, sick money, boss!”

I am not exaggerating (this time), this is actually how the conversation started and proceeded, with minimal input from me. In fact this version does not do this idiot justice because I have to summarize. If I had to type everything he said I would suffer from carpal tunnel syndrome the rest of the rest of the year. He just wouldn’t stop talking: “So what are you doing, huh? I know, ya’ll still running those little shops of yours. Boss, you need to up your game. I stopped by one of your shops. Pathetic. Boss, the first thing you need to do is change that logo. You need to brand your business. That logo looks like it was home-made in WordArt. Spend some money on really branding yourself, professionally, that’s how you make money. And the sound in your shops? Boss. C’mon. Invest in a Bose system. Spend that extra cash on your business. I saw your ML parked outside. What do you need an ML for? Sell one of your Benzes, and put that money into good sound systems for your shops. I’m talking about re-branding your business, throughout. What do your customers feel when they walk into one of your shops? Huh? Boss, what do they feel?”

Let me at this juncture inform you, dear Reader, of what I later found out about this guy, just so you can put his comments in perspective. Yes, he lived pretty large in the States for a while. After a few years, however, he was implicated in some type of tax fraud. The FBI and the IRS couldn’t pin the crimes on him directly, so rather than bother with an investigation, they simply served him with deportation papers. He was locked up in a detention center for two weeks before he was flown home. He came home with nothing more than a few bags of fancy designer clothes and a bad attitude (which is duty-free, unfortunately). As we spoke in the plane, he had been back a couple of months. He was living with his parents. He is thirty-five. Wife? Of course not. Kids? Plenty. Money? I’m willing to bet: none.

I, on the other hand, am only twenty-eight. I am married (sorry to disappoint, ladies). One child. I run a company with almost five hundred employees and well over two million dollars in monthly turnover. I don’t mean to brag but…well, actually I do, I love to brag. It appears to me that I’m not the one who actually has Mickey Mouse money, or a Mickey Mouse life, for that matter.

Aargh, you know what, I have to stop talking about this guy, on account of my blood pressure. He said so much more that I don’t have the patience to type. The only reason I didn’t knock him out with the mean end of my cell phone is that I know him. He’s always been like that. And also because I knew he was lying, because there are very few people in the world whose lives are better than mine (Will Smith and Hugh Heffner spring to mind). But above all, I ignored him because I learnt a while ago that most times, the best way to deal with an asshole is to shoot him. But I had already checked in my gun.

zakeozim@gmail.com