Paper, Pens and Files with an SPF of 30.

The Brits didn’t need much convincing when I suggested they change hotels, and to drive the point home I followed it up with the story of my best friend Stephen.

Steve had a business 8 years ago importing products from India. He had paid his shipping agent R14,000 to clear his goods through customs, and after waiting months for his products to be processed, he eventually threatened to go to the police if the goods weren’t released. So the shipping agent arrived one night at Steve’s house to have the final papers signed, but instead of wading through all the paper work, it was a lot easier just to kill Steve - so he did. After using a stun gun to immobilize Steve, he shot him in the chest and he died instantly. The shipping agent and another suspect were arrested for Steve’s murder, positively ID’d and released on R5000 bail. The case was then conveniently lost and there is no record of Stephen ever being alive or murdered except that I have pictures to prove that he once was, and memories of him being the best salsa dance partner ever. Lord knows the world has few enough male salsa dancers as it is.  

I need a new profession fast and the memory of standing in my long, heavy coat sweating in an over-heated, cramped pharmacy in NY trying to sell my family’s suntan lotion in the middle of winter seems more favourable than being thrown into the boot of a gangster’s car and taken for a fatal-shot-to-the-back-of-the-head spin around Cape Town.  

My family had produced a really cool suntan lotion packaged in the shape of a surfboard. It was called Wipeout and we were trying to break into the American market. There were several hundred boxes of the stuff sitting in a warehouse in San Francisco which I was put in charge of selling. I carefully plotted out the location of every pharmacy on Manhattan Island with a big red dot on my hand drawn map and each day, headed out into the snow with my sales kit. I invariably had to wait for the pharmacist to finish serving a customer before doing my pitch so I had plenty of time to go over it and hopefully I wasn’t going to make the same mistake as I did on my first 2 sales appointments. In the first one I mistakenly mentioned that the product was manufactured in Germany and was escorted out the shop by Wayne Cohen and on my second appointment, I mentioned South Africa and was asked to leave by Antoine King.  

But once I had fine tuned my sales pitch I was faced with another problem. On the display tray, I had space for 12 surfboard bottles and 12 lip balm, but there was no lip balm in the country and the pharmacies didn’t want to buy the kit without it. My brother arranged to send me some, but there was another slight problem, it had not been FDA approved. I was desperate to make some sales so I decided to fudge the details a little. Ted and I caught the subway to the airport to collect the lip balm. We remained in complete silence, as what we were about to do was weighing heavily on us. The mood between us didn’t improve as we walked helplessly around the industrial section of the airport trying to find the customs warehouse. Driving around when you’re lost is one thing, walking another. When we eventually found it, I signed for the lip balm as ‘stationery’ and was on my way down one of the aisles to collect it when the inspection officer joined me saying he would like to “see my stationery”. I just about fainted. The thought of being imprisoned in New York for smuggling lip balm into the country was all a bit too much for me. We arrived at a pallet and as he searched for number 114-HGQ6. I had already spotted my brother’s spider-like handwriting on the side and began preparing a speech denying any knowledge of this lip balm addressed to me. As the box was lowered to the ground the inspector was summoned over the intercom for a telephone call, he hesitated, gave me one last look and walked off and I avoided criminal prosecution by a well-timed phone call. Ted and I walked away from the customs office as fast as we possibly could, the incriminating evidence on Ted’s shoulder.  

Lip balm in hand, I zig-zagged my way across Manhattan on a bus and sold Wipeout to 99 different stores. Then I turned my attention to The Hamptons. Ted and I rented a car and drove out of the city with boxes of Wipeout and the kitchen table folded in the boot. We drove to the end of Long Island and set up our goods at the entrance to Montauke beach.

It was on one of these trips that we passed the exit to the North Shore animal league and after begging Ted to make a detour and a promise that I would assume all pet responsibilities, Nikki joined our family and became part of the Wipeout team. Nikki took her place under the kitchen table at the beach, sitting on Annabel’s hatbox. Ted’s ex roommate had joined us and was selling her homemade hair bands and scrunchies, fashioned from off cuts from her father’s curtain and couch fabric business. Nikki’s presence definitely ramped up sales when bikini clad girls couldn’t resist the temptation of cuddling this soft ball of cuteness.

Our bachelor neighbour Ken also cottoned on fast to the attributes of a cute puppy and borrowed Nikki for stoep sitting sessions to try increase his chances of reeling in a babe and getting shagged after an attempt to take up roller-dancing in Central Park had failed. They always said that the hardest part about roller-skating was telling your father you were gay.

By this stage my Scottish friend Trish was no longer married to her stoner American boyfriend and was now shacked up with a multi-billionaire. On our way back into the city after a selling trip, we stopped in to visit them at his Hamptons house. Trish’s new boyfriend, Tony, invented something really important which I can’t remember and helped fund Clinton’s campaign in 1991. They would fly down from NY each weekend, on his private plane, taking off from the Hudson river outside his Upper Eastside House and landing on the sea in front of his Hamptons house. After our visit Ted and I would leave waving to them from our car rental with Nikki, Wipeout and the kitchen table in the back. I don’t remember why I didn’t spend more time asking him how a businessman of his stature would get rid of several hundred boxes of illegal sunscreen.

On the eve of Trish’s 24^th birthday, Tony sent a limo to fetch us for a surprise birthday party he was throwing for her. We spent the evening rubbing shoulders with Kim Bassinger, Alec Baldwin and Calvin Kline. Little did I know that years later I would be interviewing Calvin in minus 40 degrees outside his Spring Fashion show.

I always like reciprocating to invitations, so I invited Tony and Trish over for dinner, but in retrospect it wasn’t very clever. The four of us sat around our rather versatile kitchen table facing the wall as there wasn’t enough room to pull it away and face each other. We were also horrifyingly close to the only bathroom. I was silently praying no-one needed to use it during the meal and was silently cursing Ted for feeding Nikki from the table every time she swatted Tony on his lap asking for something to eat. 

Then my family threw a curve ball and I had to fly to San Francisco within 24 hours and remove the suntan lotion from the warehouse to a secret location before their business partner, Harry, found out. To my moms horror she discovered he was selling the lotion right from under our noses and we had to act swiftly before he stole the whole shipment. On the plane flight over I was feeling very anxious as I had never driven a ten-ton truck before and I also had to negotiate driving on the other side of the road. But I needn’t have worried. The quadriplegic on the opposite isle seat to me turned out to be very sweet and by the time the plane landed and I had spoon-fed him his lunch we were buddies. His friends fetching him at the airport escorted me all the way to the warehouse, helped me load the boxes and deliver them to the new location. All very under cover stuff.

Hopefully once the Brits leave tomorrow my life will cease to be in danger and I can start applying for a sales or waitressing job. The shoot ended on a very high note at Mavericks, a high-end ‘gentlemen’s’ club with some stunning Ukrainian and Russian strippers. As we were lugging the camera gear into the club, a car pulled up and a man got out, spotted the camera, and got straight back in his car. No prizes to anyone thinking he was a married man. I spent the evening chatting to a Russian stripper trying to pretend she wasn’t sitting naked in front of me. The crew seemed to be having a fantastic time and I noticed Lindt Chocolate had slipped his wedding ring off. Ho hum.