What are we selling today?

Allow me the indulgence of sharing some behind-thescenes of this column. The illustrator who comes up with the cartoon that accompanies it is the longsuffering James Wolfaardt. I’m supposed to tell him what I’m writing about at least two days before my deadline. I never make that deadline and if he’s lucky, he gets a brief from me about 18 hours before I submit the column. Between him and Peta Scop, who lays out this page, I’m not sure who gets more annoyed. Anyway, when I finally got to brief James about my idea for this week, his response was, “Luckily I have a gag where a boneless guy sells his skeleton on eBay.”

I’m not sure what got me chuckling so much at this response: the resignation and exasperation at my tardiness or the fact that James had a cartoon ready of a bloke selling his skeleton on eBay. Either way, I’m grateful to have people like him in my life.

OK. Here is how James and I ended up talking about an invertebrate man. In the nine years since the HBO series Game of Thrones debuted, I had not bothered with it. It’s my usual aversion to anything that everyone hypes up. Until the end of June I had never watched more than five minutes of any episode.

Everyone kept telling me how the series was right up my alley. My brother-in-law, Thabang, was my most relentless chastiser, with his sister right on his heels. One time, he even had a WhatsApp avatar depicting Tyrion Lannister with the famous line, “This is what I do. I drink. And I know things,” which he swore captures my entire existence.

But this is not my favourite Tyrion moment in the series. That came a season earlier. At some point Tyrion is captured by slave traders, who are debating among themselves whether they should chop off Tyrion’s head. In the end they decide that they should sell his member because a “dwarf’s member is worth a lot”. But then Tyrion convinces them his member is worthless if he’s not attached to it because how will anyone know that it’s a midget’s you-know-what? This is when the slave master head honcho delivers my pound-for-pound most beautiful line of GoT: “OK. The dwarf lives until we find a cock merchant.”

This got me thinking about the fact that there’s a merchant for everything under the sun. I remember giggling myself silly some time in the late ’90s when I saw a Valpre display stand. I thought these folks were real chancers for trying to sell water to people. After all, everyone has a tap in their house, right? If they don’t, there’s a good chance they draw water from a nearby stream. Who in the hell would buy water?

Lately I’ve been seeing shops selling oxygen. This is the gas that makes up 21% of the air we breathe.

One day I’m minding my own business in my Pinetown flat. There is a knock on the door. It’s a young man with a contraption in hand. He’s

I’ll bet my last R200 that there was a bearded fellow selling foreskins in downtown Jerusalem after that exchange

selling it. What is it, padawan? What does it do? The young man selling this to me has no idea what he’s selling. Now we’re just two idiots with a machine between us. I don’t even know if R250,000 or R250 is a fair price. Finally, I tell him to bugger off before I call the police. Frankly, I’d much rather be dealing with a, you know, cock merchant.

A few months ago, I wrote a column about one of my favourite passages in the Good Book. 1 Samuel 18:27. The passage is about how King David removed the foreskins of two hundred Philistines and handed them to King Saul as a dowry for one of his daughters. The Bible is silent on what the king did with the foreskins. But I’ll bet my last R200 there was a bearded fellow selling foreskins in downtown Jerusalem after that exchange.

My Chinese brethren have been selling human hair from Indian temples to Beyoncé, Bonang and a few million of my Nubian sisters for years. I never thought anyone could make a living selling people’s hair. I was wrong.

But then again, I say this because I hadn’t checked out eBay when I started writing this column. A grilled sandwich with the Virgin Mary’s mugshot. A Dorito with the shape of the Pope’s hat. Britney Spears’s discarded gum. And my personal favourite, an 18-year-old British girl’s virginity. All on eBay. I’m not sure how many of my readers have ever experienced anyone’s virginity. But I can assure you that I wouldn’t buy an 18-year-old British girl’s. That’d be as painful as forcing Arsenal to win the English Premiership.

Where was I? Oh, yes. Selling weird stuff online. I cannot wait for that inevitable day when the ANC decides to sell its soul on eBay.

There really is no need to snort derisively. I know who will be at that auction. Gwede Mantashe, Bra Ace and the grinning president will all be there to ensure that the Guptas hand it over to the Chinese intact.