The wild days of yore
PARTY ANIMALS: A WONDER PEOPLE SURVIVED SOME CRAZY ADVENTURES The parties, cheap booze and dammitgood-times marked every weekend.
Hein Kaiser
There was a time when wildness was inevitable, when rockstars trashed hotel rooms and pop stars showed off their infants by dangling them over balconies. Big-haired rockers tossed mini-bars out of penthouses and made everyone even remotely related to the music industry feel that partying hard is okay.
Reckless play was inevitable in an industry where turning it up loud and getting lost in a riff or a driving rhythm piece with a bottle of Jack and an illicit substance or two was a lifestyle. And even here, in Mzansi, there was quite a lot of it. Sometimes it’s a wonder that people survived some crazy adventures.
There were the mad midnight dashes to find booze for raucous house parties where moving violations were the norm, not the exception. Where party animals were driving around town, stereo blaring, the dashboard a surface replacement for a few lines of coke.
It was the days of the Roxy Rhythm Bar in Melville. When pay was low and the wages of a good time forced Sunday sleepins. But there was a stage, a DJ booth playing real music and a whole lot of long hair.
The Diamond Dogs, Highway Jam and the Nude Girls rocked the place. Squeal, Amersham and even Little Sister. It was when being a groupie was cool, and when being a music journalist meant something. Because there were loads of great music to write about. Wings Beat Bar in Braamfontein was another landmark for exceptional live music.
But it was the parties, the cheap booze and the dammitgood-times that marked every weekend. And some weekdays. Thankfully, the only injury I ever sustained in my handful of reckless years was a dry piece of palm tree that went right through my leg, piercing both ends. I ran into the branch while doing some irresponsible garden theatrics. The palm tree branch attacked me out of nowhere.
I will also never forget being rushed to Helen Joseph Hospital, not quite sobered up by the pain, and only being seen to after a wait that felt like an eternity. Some student-doctor took tool, gouged it into my leg and somewhat botched it, only getting rid of the ends poking out of my skin but leaving a good piece of wood behind in my shin.
It was only a week later that a GP managed to squeeze out most of the remainder of the piece of palm. The rest, he said at the time, would disintegrate inside my leg over a few months or so.
There was always this feeling of being naughty, of being a rebel and that motivating partying even harder.
I was lucky enough to tour with a sprinkle of international artists many years ago, and I will also never forget some backstage moments where unlimited alcohol, mountains of illicit substances and other indulgences were freely available.
There was another band, while performing in Cape Town, that commandeered a combi after the show and invited me to join them trolling the streets, looking for, preferably, a party of attractive one-night stands.
Looking back, those were the days. But what’s always stuck with me is that decades later, we’re all partied out. I have been privileged to marry the love of my life, with the two kids and a dog package.
Former partners in party-crime have also segued into picket-fence life. Some have become high-ranking executives, others in the middle-management space, but everyone holds down respectable jobs while raising families.
I often wonder whether partying radically hard in your early 20s has a substantial influence in future stability as an adult, doing grown up things, and raising children. And I think it does. It’s made me more conservative and more liberal at the same time. While it’s a dichotomy of sorts, the journey feels like it’s had a destination.
And I still have the scar on my leg where the palm tree attacked me.
One of the common questions dog owners ask is: does it matter if my dog licks my face or if my dog kisses me on the mouth?
The answer is not the same for all our furry friends.
In most cases, dogs’ saliva and tongues do not carry zoonotic diseases, which are diseases that we can get from our dogs.
A dog’s mouth contains just over 600 variants of bacteria as our mouths. It was generally believed that dogs’ mouths could be cleaner than humans’ mouths.
This might not necessarily be the case. Tartar and halitosis in dogs are typically started by bacteria and can lead to similar oral diseases that humans get such as gingivitis, caries, root tooth and abscessation.
The bacteria found in dogs’ mouths are specific to them and mostly different from those in our mouths. Swopping the saliva with healthy dogs should not cause any adverse effects.
However, dogs’ mouths can be contaminated by their environment. The food they eat can influence their oral hygiene and oral environment.
Some raw foods may contain zoonotic diseases that may be harboured in the mouth and saliva of our furry friends.
The cooking and processing of dog foods tend to sterilise these pathogens in most cases. All raw food is not bad. It depends on where the raw ingredients are sourced and how they are stored.
Diseases caused by salmonella, tapeworm and clostridium may occur. Remember, most dogs lick themselves or their mates, and some eat their poop. Some dogs also thrive on raiding the litter box, and one can just imagine how clean these are.
In areas with endemic rabies infections, care should be taken with allowing dogs that you are not familiar with to lick you.
Rabies is a zoonotic infection with no cure. While our mucosal membranes of the mouth, nose, eyes, and ears absorb bacteria very easily, open wounds are at a higher risk of harbouring and forming a suitable environment for culturing bacteria of all kinds.
If you allow your dog to lick your wounds, which was widely used by the early Egyptians as a wound healing technique, it may create more infections and slower wound healing.
Good mouth hygiene is essential for the health of our pets. This all starts with healthy sources of foods – raw, cooked, or processed. Healthy treats need to be replaced or removed if left lying around. Bones can cause cracked and broken teeth and, together with hooves, may cause blockages in the gut.
Brushing your pets’ teeth daily is always a good practice to start with when they are still young. However, use the appropriate brushes and toothpaste.
So, the answer is in you knowing your dog and its habits. Knowing what your dogs get up to should inform your decision to allow them to lick your face. –