the street is my alarm clock. i don’t get to set it.

This Indian girl was screaming at a man in a yellow shirt the other night. He seemed like he was her boyfriend and he didn’t want her to drive. I didn’t really care what she did. Everyone knows the drunks own the road after 2AM.

I did feel kind of bad for the eight street people trying to sleep on the Lawyer’s patio though. But they seemed to be as entertained as I was, so I wasn’t too bothered. Plus they defecate there and the smells waft up to my room on the shit wind.

I wanted to go back to sleep but the Indian girl punched the blue dress girl in the face so I stayed at my window to watch. They probably were friends right up until then. My girlfriend said, “this is better than Isidingo”.

I don’t know. I don’t watch soapies.

In the morning when the old white man in the bathrobe threw a bottle from his balcony at the black street kids we woke up again. I figured his aim was probably terrible because he was old so I wasn’t worried. My girlfriend said, “I’m going to have a word with that asshole.”

After breakfast we went down and rang his flat from the gate. His wife said he wasn’t there and then went on talking like eighty year olds do and I got bored but stayed because she mentioned a guy died and I got interested again. She said, “we’ve been here since 1983 [...] this neighborhood has really gone down [...] a man died there on the street. The police had to stand around for 3 hours before someone came to take the body.”

I didn’t really see the point of what she was talking about because it had nothing to do with throwing glass bottles at street kids but then she said they were stuffing cardboard into the drain and wouldn’t stop when they were asked to.

We both felt kind of deflated because we thought we were going to get to be righteous but instead just understood where the old people were coming from. I guess when you’re tired and older than forever you’re allowed to be irrational.

When I think about it, even though I’m tired too most days, the singing guy is actually kind of nice. I really wish he would come back.