Mom says "I'd rather you took drugs than spoke in clichés". Then she says "Must you marry every man that you sleep with?" in that pointed, acerbic tone that always puts me in my place. Actually I do take drugs. And I've slept with more men than she's had breakfast. She just doesn't know about them. Suddenly I had this idea to become a webcam girl. Just to spite her. Show it all on Youtube. Or start a blog. But then the old cunt will write me out of her will. God willing. You can't leave the important things up to God. God's only good for the trivial stuff. Like batteries. Duracell. Eveready. It's the same product. Only the lies on the label are different. "Don't even go there." Another reprehensible cliché. Not to mention my first day at Michaelis. Getting lectured by a dreadful little man with tiny feet, "You girls are all here to get husbands, you're all running around with your ovaries bouncing!" Not in his direction. Dwarf. How do people get so bitter? South Africa is such a haven for mediocrity we have to smuggle in people that are good at what they do. Never been one for politics. It's always walking into the wall of the past. I prefer the belief system that structures everything now and nothing is the way it is because of the past. Fuck the past. Wherever I am is where I belong. To me. I'm daydreaming during his lecture when the dwarf comes up to me and maliciously whispers close to my ear, "You're not here to be famous, you're here to work." Wrong on both counts buster. Apparently the dwarf used to be a real talent back in the seventies. Then he got bitten by cigarettes. Landed up lecturing. It was that or quitting. Doctors are just dealers anyway and misogyny is survival for girls. So I had a brief fling with the dwarf. I realized that he'd found out it was over when he said to me, sulkingly, "Why aren't you asking me for money anymore?" I learned that from Mom. She always used to say "There's only three things a man has to know. Pay. Pay. And Pay."