There are some questions to which there is just no right answer. These include that old stalwart, “What do you think you’re looking at, hey?” – which is often followed by a fist, glass or something similar.
Another one is, “Think you’re smart, hey?” – with adjectives such as “clever,” “larney” and “important” being freely interchangeable. Once again, this is normally a purely rhetorical question and serves to underscore shortcomings on the part of the individual doing the asking.
In a not dissimilar way, you’ll often notice that, when one group or class of people are deemed “snobs, hey”, it is generally by the envious and inadequate.
As in, “Jirre, okes who live in Sandton/Camp’s Bay/Umhlanga are snobs, hey?” And while I don’t live in an especially prestigious area, when I hear this sort of rubbish I’m often tempted to interject, “No, they’re not really snobs. They’re just appalled that you look like an extra out of Deliverance, that you hold Huisgenoot to be a literary high-water mark, and that your family has clearly been in-breeding for the past five generations.”
But I’m straying off the point a bit, namely that there’s absolutely nothing like a conspicuously expensive piece of machinery to incite overt envy in certain males (covert envy is more a female syndrome and deserving of a tome of its own).
As I write this, I’ve recently spent a week gliding about in a new Jaguar XJ – which is probably the sexiest super saloon on the planet, second only to the Maserati Quattroporte.
The Jaguar was also the trigger for this piece, which I’ve been meaning to do in some form or other ever since The Incident With The Corvette.
That was over 15 years ago – which I suppose is testament to my formidable powers of procrastination – and came about when I was loaned a new Chev Corvette when I was still with the sadly departed Scope magazine.
Now, while a ‘Vette is a fairly crude and tacky device compared to an aristocratic Jaguar, at the time I was only about 25, and it might as well have been Elijah’s chariot.
Naturally, it attracted lots of attention, and nowhere more so than in the working-class suburbs next to the industrial area where the magazine was then based.
And tooling through those suburbs and the parking lot of the local shopping mall, I could almost feel the narrow-eyed hatred of the local “okes”, especially as that Corvette no doubt represented the apogee of their most fevered lotto-winning fantasies.
This must have just been exacerbated by comments from the local girls, including the one from a dried-out, bleached-blonde who, on hearing the ‘Vette’s big 5.7-litre V8 rumble into life, coyly declared that, “Aye, that just makes my (insert a vulgar term for female reproductive organs) all tingly, hey…”
Eventually, this was just too much for one of the “okes” who phoned the MD of the publishing company that owned Scope – and I can only think how all this must have taxed his powers of initiative – to complain about this Corvette driver. Fortunately, he was told to bugger off.
But I’ve never forgotten the sheer, petty mendacity of that episode, and I’ve had lots more envy-fuelled run-ins since.
Just some that come to mind include the group of drunks in a Portnet Nissan Sentra who wanted to beat me up one Friday afternoon for the sin of pulling up next to them at a robot in a big, black BMW 7 Series.
Then there was the tow truck driver who tail-gated inches behind the Mercedes SLK I was testing, while his lips writhed like epileptic leeches as he obviously speculated to the girl sitting next to him on my penchant for onanism. And quite probably on my provenance, sexual orientation, and the general inadequacies that I was unsuccessfully trying to redress with a German sports car.
Naturally, the Jaguar also caused at least one character to pull up next to me in a cheaply, cheesily tweaked hot hatch, conspicuously ignore the car, and then pull away with an impotent squeal of tyres.
But at the risk of dissing my race and gender, here’s the funny thing: in my experience any act of uncontrolled automotive envy invariably comes from a white male.
Conversely, and especially here in KZN where I live, any wild acclamation, delirious applause or hushed requests for a look inside and details on performance and price, come from black or Indian males, both groups often being extraordinarily aware and appreciative of all things vehicular.
It’s not an economic thing either, because I’ve had black acquaintances who I full know can sometimes barely afford a packet of mielie meal ululate at the sight of a new convertible.
Then I’ve had a black businessman – or politician; they’re now both the same thing aren’t they? – almost fall out of his Mercedes C63 AMG while giving thumbs-ups to the Harley-Davidson I was riding. Plus, when a group of spikey-haired youths in a pimped-out Golf drew alongside the Jaguar as I tooled down the N3 at a sanctimonious 120km/h and exhorted me to “Gas it!” they were Indian, as it happened.
And no, I don’t have an answer or an explanation for that.
But purchase price or prestige isn’t strictly linked to aggressive envy.
Quite a while ago I spent some time smoking about Durban in a gorgeous, dipsomaniac Rolls-Royce Silver Spirit that attracted lots of adulation – but absolutely none of the quivering fury that so many other expensive vehicles engender. The only reason that I could think of was that it was just too far off your average breker’s scale of reference.
I remember pulling into a service station one night for yet more fuel.
Filling up next to the Spirit was a dissolving, tarted-up Toyota Corolla with two “okes” in the front and a girl in the back. As the Spirit gulped away at the pump, they just stared, and stared some more in what I thought was surely a precursor to some spirited flinging of insults.
Eventually the chief breker broke the silence, saying, “Jirre, but your Rolls is lekker, hey. Sir.” And as their Corolla pulled away – the Rolls was still gulping its fuel – the girl stared from the backseat with a look that I can only imagine is reserved for the sickeningly rich or famous.
To paraphrase the Martin Amis novel Money: driving a Roller – even an older one – is like saying to the rest of the world, with an airy wave towards the car, “This is money. I don’t believe you’ve met.”
