Into Bits

It was barely 10 p.m., and Lane had just broken a Black Label all over the dance floor. It wasn’t her fault, really. She’d been pushing past a gaggle of glimmering twinks to get behind the DJ booth when one of their bony elbows jutted out and jabbed her right in the ribs. The bottle—barely sipped—slipped straight through her fingers and smashed into bits. Great look for DJ LoversLane: alone at the club, bug-eyed and boozeless in beer-spattered Blundstone boots.

The twinks were, quite typically, unperturbed. Glass shards crunched under their shoes as they tittered and looked Lane up and down over their shoulders. Lane cursed. She was right in the middle of her set, and she’d barely had time to get the damn drink, let alone mop up a mess before the next track. Served her right for risking it, she supposed.

Blacklight was busy tonight, much like it was every month-end Saturday. Lane spotted representatives from every corner of Cape Town’s queer ecosystem: from inner-city art-school glitterati to Observatory’s plastic-punk enbies; from township butches with fresh fades to the Western seaboard’s always-sunburned sapphics. Tonight’s edition had even attracted a clump of corporate gays, sheathed in tight trousers and stiff-collared shirts just unbuttoned. They had enclosed themselves in a corner booth with a bottle of something bubbling—at least until they were loose enough to mix with the hoi polloi.

Lane knelt to collect bits of the broken glass. A foamy beer drop trickled onto her skin and turned opalescent-white. She watched it shiver with the heavy bass of the music and quickly wiped it away. She looked up to survey the crowd. The space was jammed with the gender-bent, with loping swaths of bare skin, bejeweled beards, and blackened lashes blended together, swaying and sweltering across the poured concrete floor. Colorful fluorescent bulbs glinted in the disco ball overhead and bounced shards of light off of everything—sweat drops rolling down hairy pits turned spangled, and spit-coated lips, just kissed, sheened in the hot-pink glow.

Lane spotted representatives from every corner of Cape Town’s queer ecosystem: from inner-city art-school glitterati to Observatory’s plastic-punk enbies; from township butches with fresh fades to the Western seaboard’s always-sunburned sapphics.

Blacklight was that kind of party, the kind that drew folks from walks of life usually far removed. That was what Lane loved about it. One night a month, Cape Town’s partygoers were equalized under neon lighting and poor ventilation. Part of the magic was the space itself: Blacklight was held in a warehouse on the very outskirts of the urban sprawl, verging on the periphery, but not so far that it lay beyond the city dwellers’ imagined line between safety and danger. The industrial interior paired with installations by recent art-school grads made it approachable yet edgy enough to appeal to average Joes and adventure seekers alike. There were also sliding scale ticket prices and a free shuttle bus from Gugulethu’s biggest gay shebeen. Although Lane wasn’t so sure how successfully that whole thing had shifted the typical party demographics. But hey, at least they were trying. And Lane was committed. One night at Blacklight could change your life, even if just for the handful of hours between a wink across the room and a roll through a new set of sheets.

Having swept up the remaining glass, Lane had returned to her mixer to cue up her next high-tempo house mix when Mel burst into view at the foot of the booth. They were cackling and naked from the waist up, two more beers clutched in hand. They thrust one at Lane with gusto before bellowing, “Check me out, bru!”

They’d clipped each end of a thin metal chain to their nipple rings and were flopping up and down, whirling the chain in circles between their tits like a double Dutch rope to the bump-bump-bump of the beat. A couple of younger dykes were giggling at their antics close behind. Lane chuckled. Regular Mel, always a fucking riot.

Sweat glued Lane’s curls to her forehead as she slid between local amapiano tracks and international hip-hop hits, throwing in layered loops and echo effects to make her transitions extra tasty. Pungent wafts from a bottle of poppers swirled around in the throng. Someone handed it up to the booth, and Lane took a whiff. Her brain seemed to smelt and congeal into something purer in her skull. Puckered white flower petals poked up from between two buttons on the mixer. A daisy. Lane yanked it out and tossed it underfoot before it had fully bloomed. She let her limbs hang loose and rocked back and forth.

Blacklight was held in a warehouse on the very outskirts of the urban sprawl, verging on the periphery, but not so far that it lay beyond the city dwellers’ imagined line between safety and danger.

Lane’s phone dinged. Perfect timing, end of set. King had arrived. She gulped down the last few sips of her beer and shoved the empty bottle into Mel’s bare chest. “Getting us some party favors.” Lane winked. Mel clinked the bottle against the metal of her piercings in a gesture of solidarity. The baby dykes cooed.

Thumping bass vibrated the ground outside the club. Lane gulped down the nonsticky air. King’s familiar navy sedan was idling across the street. Lane opened the door and slid into the back seat with a friendly greeting. King said nothing as he put the car into gear. All business, as always. A toddler was slumped in the passenger seat, pinging away at a video game.

“Your son?” Lane asked gingerly. King nodded. “Very cute.”

She passed King the cash, which he slid into his pocket without counting. He pressed a hard little knot wrapped in plastic into her palm.

“Thank you very much,” she replied as King silently shifted into drive and pulled the car up around the back side of the club.

As Lane stepped out of the car, her foot caught on something. She looked down and her boot had disappeared, swallowed completely into the street. What had been the black tar surface had taken on the texture of satin fabric, folding in accordions and rippling outward from her submerged ankle. And it was yanking on her leg.

Lane groaned. “Fuck’s sake, not this again!”

It was pointless to fight the pull, she knew. She squeezed her eyes shut and forced herself limp. The folds enveloped her body, drawing tight over her torso and then her head as she was sucked below the earth’s surface. Once she was still, she opened her eyes and blinked against the sudden influx of light.

“What is it now, Stella?” Lane snapped.

“You are repeating a deeply unhelpful pattern, Lane.”

Stella’s voice was tinged with that cool moralism that made Lane’s skin itch. It was the same as every other time Lane had been pulled into the Land realm. Stella sat perched above her on some unseen seat, suspended midair among billions of dustlike, flesh-colored specks that flitted in and out of sight. Her body was coated in a white robe that looked liquid, like milk that clung to her form and shifted in the same manner as air. Lane hated how it lapped at her body. The space heaved and breathed with their movements. Lane glared up through the haze.

“Babe, please,” Lane scoffed. “Spare me the holistic health spiel. You’ve been holed up down here alone with the Land for how long now? You have no clue what my life looks like anymore. Let me go, I have another set coming up.”

As usual, too, Stella’s face was a perfect mask. Not a twitch nor tightness betrayed emotion. She’d always had a penchant for performativity, but ever since she’d pledged herself to the Land realm—to “the work,” as she called it—she’d become totally insufferable.

“Is it necessary to lose yourself in it?”

“Lose myself?” Lane couldn’t suppress a laugh. “What the fuck do you call this then? Looks a helluva lot like losing yourself to me!”

“Privilege, Lane, it’s different. We have to give something—”

“Give something up, ja, ja, ja; I know that story! I’ve told that story. Don’t forget who took you to your first mass gathering back in the #MustFall days, Stella.”

Stella’s serene veneer faltered, and her nose and forehead tangled in the center of her face.

“Forget? Let’s not talk about forgetting, Lane. I remember. I am so damn tired of remembering! Every march, every occupation, every vigil. All the fighting, and fighting, and fighting, like we’d never be able to stop fighting. Do you remember? Your ‘radical politics’ has become, what? Getting shit-faced every weekend, taking that nonsense up the nose? Sure, makes way more sense than my thing.”

“That’s not the point, and you know it.”

Stella exhaled sharply. Her dress rippled around her. “Alright, Lane. I’ve missed your point again. I can’t remember how this all got so heavy.”

Silence stretched between them. Stella began to recompose herself, slowly arranging her milky garment around her lower legs with long, skinny fingers. Lane drew in several deep breaths, and the air around her thinned.

“People need a break, Stell. Some hope. Hell, I need a break. Sometimes it feels like everything is going to shit so fast. I couldn’t even afford the apartment anymore, you know that? I had to move further out … Meanwhile you’re down here pushing up daisies.”

Stella was a picture of serenity again, the air draped gauzily around her, dress smoothed and still. She stared expressionlessly at Lane. Through her, almost.

“Anyway,” Lane continued. “Not everything has to be so sanctimonious like your Land-ho harem, okay! It’s like you don’t want to feel anything. Nothing ugly. Nothing real.”

“Harem? Perhaps you should be more intentional with your language,” Stella quipped. “The work targets the deepest parts of the earth, Lane. It will take time until the Land can heal itself sustainably again. Regardless of how you feel about the aesthetics of it, it is actually making a difference. At a structural level. That’s real. Besides, I can’t settle for a life built on taking without sacrificing something. That feels so … selfish.”

“Well look what you sacrificed!” Lane burst out. “We used to think—”

“Yes, Lane, I know what I used to think.”

Lane looked down at what should have been the ground, her eyes stinging in the haze. She blinked hard and shrugged her shoulders.

“Lose myself?” Lane couldn’t suppress a laugh. “What the fuck do you call this then? Looks a helluva lot like losing yourself to me!”

Lane fidgeted with the hem of her shirt.

“Send me back, Stell. You know how I feel about fighting when I have work.”

Stella sighed. “Sure.”

She spoke softly into the air, and the fleshy dust began to swirl soundlessly. Lane squeezed her eyes shut to stop the vertigo as the ground gave way and she was whooshed back up to the surface. Lane’s thoughts jumbled together. It wasn’t like she didn’t get it. She totally supported the aims of “the work”! Hell, she had fought for it too—lost friends for it, even! But did the Land folks have to be so damn superior about it all? Anyway, it had been Stella’s choice to go under full-time. Losing yourself indeed. More like a get-out-of-guilt-free card dressed up as reparation.

As though she could sense Lane’s thoughts, Stella’s voice echoed upward, filling Lane’s ears as the first gust of wind from the surface world hit her skin.

“You know where I am, Lane …”

Lane opened her eyes to find that she had been spat out in the middle of a scene at Blacklight’s back door. A queen in a tie-dyed gown, hand bleeding, was being bandaged by the bouncer and consoled by a small group. She’d been mugged on her walk from the bus stop by someone with a knife. Lane’s sudden arrival pulled the queen’s gaze away from her own bloodied palm. She cackled.

A queen in a tie-dyed gown, hand bleeding, was being bandaged by the bouncer and consoled by a small group.

You one of those Landies? They let y’all out for a drink?” she asked.

“No,” Lane mumbled, “my ex-girlfriend.”

The queen laughed again. The sound sliced through the night. “Oh, the lesbiana-drama of it all, mama!” she chortled. “Truly my favorite. Never gets old.”

Lane said nothing and shouldered her way inside. She ordered another beer and a shot of whiskey from the bar. She knocked back the whiskey. It seared down her gullet and smacked her hard in the chest.

When she reached the booth, Lane stared down at the deck. It was barely 11 p.m. She looked up. The crowd churned with bodies dancing, kissing, joking, flirting: a soup of friends, strangers, and near-familiars all dissolving into each other. She unclenched her hand around the Black Label. The bottle—barely sipped—slipped straight through her fingers and smashed into bits all over the mixer.

It hissed and sparked with streaks of fizzy white that fractured into billions of fragments. A sharp electrical pop shook the room, and the lights flickered once, twice. The dance floor morphed into a fleshy dough, rolling and folding in on itself. The bodies lurched as one, left and then right. Flecks of dust swept up from the floor in flurried swirls. Everyone screamed when the lights blew out.