653289528350

Bongani, the other middleman from my CD business, found out I had a date, and he
made it his mission to give me a makeover. “You need to up your game,” he said. “You cannot
go to the dance looking the way you look—for her sake, not yours. Let’s go shopping.”
I went to my mom and begged her to give me money to buy something to wear for the
dance. She finally relented and gave me 2,000 rand, for one outfit. It was the most money
she’d ever given me for anything in my life. I told Bongani how much I had to spend, and he
said we’d make it work. The trick to looking rich, he told me, is to have one expensive item,
and for the rest of the things you get basic, good-looking quality stuff. The nice item will draw
everyone’s eye, and it’ll look like you’ve spent more than you have.
In my mind nothing was cooler than the leather coats everybody wore in The Matrix. The
Matrix came out while I was in high school and it was my favorite movie at the time. I loved
Neo. In my heart I knew: I am Neo. He’s a nerd. He’s useless at everything, but secretly he’s a
badass superhero. All I needed was a bald, mysterious black man to come into my life and
show me the way. Now I had Bongani, black, head shaved, telling me, “You can do it. You’re
the one.” And I was like, “Yes. I knew it.”
I told Bongani I wanted a leather coat like Keanu Reeves wore, the ankle-length black
one. Bongani shut that down. “No, that’s not practical. It’s cool, but you’ll never be able to
wear it again.” He took me shopping and we bought a calf-length black leather jacket, which
would look ridiculous today but at the time, thanks to Neo, was very cool. That alone cost
1,200 rand. Then we finished the outfit with a pair of simple black pants, suede square-toed
shoes, and a cream-white knitted sweater.
Once we had the outfit, Bongani took a long look at my enormous Afro. I was forever
trying to get the perfect 1970s Michael Jackson Afro. What I had was more Buckwheat:
unruly and impossible to comb, like stabbing a pitchfork into a bed of crabgrass.
“We need to fix that fucking hair,” Bongani said.
“What do you mean?” I said. “This is just my hair.”
“No, we have to do something.”
Bongani lived in Alexandra. He dragged me there, and we went to talk to some girls from
his street who were hanging out on the corner.
“What would you do with this guy’s hair?” he asked them.
The girls looked me over.
“He has so much,” one of them said. “Why doesn’t he cornrow it?”
“Shit, yeah,” they said. “That’s great!”
I said, “What? Cornrows? No!”
“No, no,” they said. “Do it.”
Bongani dragged me to a hair salon down the street. We went in and sat down. The
woman touched my hair, shook her head, and turned to Bongani.
“I can’t work with this sheep,” she said. “You have to do something about this.”
“What do we need to do?”
“You have to relax it. I don’t do that here.”
“Okay.”
Bongani dragged me to a second salon. I sat down in the chair, and the woman took my