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hair and started painting this creamy white stuff in it. She was wearing rubber gloves to keep this chemical relaxer off her own skin, which should have been my first clue that maybe this wasn’t such a great idea. Once my hair was full of the relaxer, she told me, “You have to try to keep it in for as long as possible. It’s going to start burning. When it starts burning, tell me and we’ll rinse it out. But the longer you can handle it, the straighter your hair will become.” I wanted to do it right, so I sat in the chair and waited and waited for as long as I could. I waited too long. She’d told me to tell her when it started burning. She should have told me to tell her when it started tingling, because by the time it was actually burning it had already taken off several layers of my scalp. I was well past tingling when I started to freak out. “It’s burning! It’s burning!” She rushed me over to the sink and started to rinse the relaxer out. What I didn’t know is that the chemical doesn’t really start to burn until it’s being rinsed out. I felt like someone was pouring liquid fire onto my head. When she was done I had patches of acid burns all over my scalp. I was the only man in the salon; it was all women. It was a window into what women experience to look good on a regular basis. Why would they ever do this?, I thought. This is horrible. But it worked. My hair was completely straight. The woman combed it back, and I looked like a pimp, a pimp named Slickback. Bongani then dragged me back to the first salon, and the woman agreed to cornrow my hair. She worked slowly. It took six hours. Finally she said, “Okay, you can look in the mirror.” She turned me around in the chair and I looked in the mirror and…I had never seen myself like that before. It was like the makeover scenes in my American movies, where they take the dorky guy or girl, fix the hair and change the clothes, and the ugly duckling becomes the swan. I’d been so convinced I’d never get a date that I never tried to look nice for a girl, so I didn’t know that I could. The hair was good. My skin wasn’t perfect, but it was getting better; the pustules had receded into regular pimples. I looked…not bad. I went home, and my mom squealed when I walked in the door. “Ooooooh! They turned my baby boy into a pretty little girl! I’ve got a little girl! You’re so pretty!” “Mom! C’mon. Stop it.” “Is this the way you’re telling me that you’re gay?” “What? No. Why would you say that?” “You know it’s okay if you are.” “No, Mom. I’m not gay.” Everyone in my family loved it. They all thought it looked great. My mom did tease the shit out of me, though. “It’s very well done,” she said, “but it is way too pretty. You do look like a girl.” — The big night finally came. Tom came over to help me get ready. The hair, the clothes, everything came together perfectly. Once I was set, we went to Abel to get the keys to the BMW, and that was the moment the whole night started to go wrong.
It was a Saturday night, end of the week, which meant Abel was drinking with his workers. I walked out to his garage, and as soon as I saw his eyes I knew: He was wasted. Fuck. When Abel was drunk he was a completely different person. “Ah, you look nice!” he said with a big smile, looking me over. “Where are you going?” “Where am I—Abie, I’m going to the dance.” “Okay. Have fun.” “Um…can I get the keys?” “The keys to what?” “To the car.” “What car?” “The BMW. You promised I could drive the BMW to the dance.” “First go buy me some beers,” he said. He gave me his car keys; Tom and I drove to the liquor store. I bought Abel a few cases of beer, drove back, and unloaded it for him. “Okay,” I said, “can I take the BMW now?” “No.” “What do you mean ‘no’?” “I mean ‘no.’ I need my car tonight.” “But you promised. You said I could take it.” “Yeah, but I need the car.” I was crushed. I sat there with Tom and begged him for close to half an hour. “Please.” “No.” “Please.” “Nope.” Finally we realized it wasn’t going to happen. We took the shitty Mazda and drove to Babiki’s house. I was an hour late picking her up. She was completely pissed off. Tom had to go in and convince her to come out, and eventually she did. She was even more gorgeous than before, in an amazing red dress, but she was clearly not in a great mood. Inside I was quietly starting to panic, but I smiled and kept trying my gentlemanly best to be a good date, holding the door for her, telling her how beautiful she was. Tom and the sister gave us a send-off and we headed out. Then I got lost. The dance was being held at some venue in a part of town I wasn’t familiar with, and at some point I got completely turned around and had no idea where I was. I drove around for an hour in the dark, going left, going right, doubling back. I was on my cellphone the whole time, desperately calling people, trying to figure out where I was, trying to get directions. Babiki sat next to me in stony silence the whole time, clearly not feeling me or this night at all. I was crashing hard. I was late. I didn’t know where I was going. I was the worst date she’d ever had in her life. I finally figured out where I was and we made it to the dance, nearly two hours late. I parked, jumped out, and ran around to get her door. When I opened it, she just sat there.
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Copyright © 2016 by Trevor Noah Al
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IMMORALITY ACT, 1927 To prohibit il
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RUN Sometimes in big Hollywood movi
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like bouncers at a club, and hold t
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failed her she’d use her wits. If
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you stealing our customers? Why are
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there, this little boy and his mom,
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BORN A CRIME I grew up in South Afr
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Many of the prostitutes in town wer
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he hadn’t, but once I existed he
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Traveling around the world today, I
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TREVOR, PRAY I grew up in a world r
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That’s all she did, all day, ever
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speakeasy. The shebeens were where
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using sonar. Every time she called
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praying continued. It went on for s
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CHAMELEON One afternoon I was playi
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As a kid I understood that people w
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was an ocean of black, like someone
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Before apartheid, any black South A
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and uncles had gone off to the citi
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through those. My books were my pri
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If we weren’t at school or work o
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Apartheid, for all its power, had f
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at school used overhead projectors
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She shrugged again. “So sad. I ho
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“What?” “Look, did you or did
Page 58 and 59: When I was seven years old, my moth
Page 60 and 61: I grew up in a black family in a bl
Page 62 and 63: oth. She brought them home, and I w
Page 64 and 65: They went back and forth. This woma
Page 66 and 67: ROBERT My father is a complete myst
Page 68 and 69: dad’s, where we’d watch Formula
Page 70 and 71: A bottle of Sprite. Custard with ca
Page 73 and 74: W hen Dutch colonists landed at the
Page 75 and 76: your grandfather couldn’t keep hi
Page 77 and 78: Things like that happened a lot. I
Page 79 and 80: Revenge truly is sweet. It takes yo
Page 82 and 83: A YOUNG MAN’S LONG, AWKWARD, OCCA
Page 84 and 85: Valentine’s card and the flowers
Page 86 and 87: OUTSIDER After finishing primary sc
Page 88 and 89: work for it—and I still get my br
Page 93 and 94: me the digits one by one as I wrote
Page 95 and 96: COLORBLIND At Sandringham I got to
Page 97 and 98: pedestrian out for a stroll. Once I
Page 99 and 100: “Is it David?” “No.” “Ria
Page 104 and 105: I got up onstage and Tom did some t
Page 106 and 107: There was a red Mazda that we’d h
Page 110 and 111: “Are you ready?” I said. “Let
Page 112: I’d been dating a girl for over a
Page 115 and 116: GO HITLER! When I was in grade nine
Page 117 and 118: Business was booming. By matric I w
Page 119 and 120: Back then, most DJs could spin for
Page 121 and 122: someone must be the toughest guy of
Page 123 and 124: My mind was racing, trying to figur
Page 125 and 126: THE CHEESE BOYS My friend Bongani w
Page 127 and 128: settlement going on. Third, Fourth,
Page 129 and 130: In the hood, even if you’re not a
Page 131 and 132: “But who did this belong to?” I
Page 133 and 134: “Hey, let’s make a deal. We’l
Page 135 and 136: Everyone must know that your succes
Page 137 and 138: e a whole lot harder for an investm
Page 139 and 140: O nce, when I was ten years old, vi
Page 141 and 142: lesson, and now that lesson is the
Page 143 and 144: me aside and told me what I was in
Page 145 and 146: first night, everyone was giving me
Page 147 and 148: couldn’t afford anything but a st
Page 149 and 150: “I-I’m not fine, Your Honor. I
Page 151 and 152: M y favorite thing to eat as a kid,
Page 153 and 154: could lift car engines and gearboxe
Page 155 and 156: Xhosa woman no less, a culture whos
Page 157 and 158: “Respect?! You almost burned down
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She gives and gives and gives; that
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on it as well. Clients were getting
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Bramley, three neighborhoods away,
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wouldn’t happen again, but it was
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“This is all I can do,” she sai
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“Where are you now?” I said.
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times he pulled the trigger, and fo
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emergency room to give us an update
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W hen my mother was shot, so much h
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For my mother. My first fan. Thank
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR TREVOR NOAH is a c
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