It was like something out of Mad Max on the back of that truck. Twitchy euro-boys, feigning confidence with ethnic trinkets and ill-advised piercings, wild-eyed white South Africans, apartheid-era cops in another life, for sure. And us. For us it was maybe more like a Vietnam movie, we were the fresh conscripts, unable to feign indifference to our fate. Something seemed a bit wrong about everyone. In fact the wrong was the situation, who wants to go to the bottom of the sea? We have no place there, but we were used to that sensation by now. As were the white South Africans i mused, maybe that was part of the appeal for them. For a long time now i've always kept close the immortal words of Harvey Keitel in Mean Streets, "don't fuck with the infinite" he said, and i've always agreed. And so it came to pass.

There was blood all over Oatsys face when he emerged through the surface of the water. His blood on his face and my sick in his hair. He didn't know that yet. He didn't know much yet, of what had been happening while he was down there, the pain, the existential torment, the private vows to self, the forty grand bribe. He was ignorant at this point, if not exactly blissfull. You can't fake looking worried, you'd probably never want to, but it's pretty unmistakeable when you see it. Oatsy looked worried.

It had gone wrong straight away. We'd only taken in two of the hand signals that comprise the international underwater language, something's wrong and everything's ok. We should have only bothered with one. Apparently your IQ halves when you put on the Jacques Cousteau costume, in our case it was probably halved again due to the toxic diesel dust and ice cold Hansas we'd been up all night ingesting.

No one seemed that bothered when I told them I didn't know how much I weighed. Not fucking much that was for sure, after the aforementioned diet of toxic dust and Durban lager we'd been on for the past two weeks. A gastronomic tour this was not. Like classic Brits abroad, our evenings dinner arrangements were governed by the fuckability of the waitresses and the likelihood of food poisoning rather than the appeal of the specials board. Although in all fairness the women had so far been far more poisonous than the food but we'll save that for another time. No, they just guessed at how much i weighed, fucking wrongly as it happens, and sent me crashing to the bottom of the ocean. All that crap about the bends they'd bored us through for the past few days in that airless classroom went out the window as I hurtled down the rope. I knew they hadn't given a shit. And swimming. All that shit they'd filled us with, all the charts and tables they knew we weren't taking in and they'd neglected to tell us how to swim down there. I was lost and unable to move. It sounds dramatic i know, but I felt strangely calm. Immediately I knew I was never coming back down here in my fucking life so I thought i'd take in the scenery. Quickly.

My paranoia wasn't as far advanced as Oatsys, I felt no conspiracy from the dumb fuck who'd taken one look at my skinny frame and decided I weighed sixteen stone. Nor any malice towards my supposed dive buddy who signalled, 'where is he?', recieved a shrug of the shoulders, shrugged his own and fucked off. Oatsys dive buddy was different. I picked him out on the back of the truck. The biggest, reddest, most malevolent slice of Afrikaaner manhood you could ever set your eyes on. "You'll get him" I whispered to Oatsy as we both stifled a nervous laugh. "you're with me bru" he said to Oatsy as we arrived at the shore. Tragicomic i think the word is. I had my own demons to deal with as we clambered onto the boat. Never having had the greatest sea legs, it hadn't occured to me the boat would have such trouble getting out past the angry waves that pounded the grey coastline. Or that I'd be throwing up last nights Hansa before I'd even got wet.

I may be failing myself here, but I can think of no adequate way to describe the mix of terror and resignation a man goes through as he launches himself backwards into a rough sea, seconds after throwing up. Knowing I was headed to uncharted territory I didn't want to visit and deep down, knowing I shouldn't. I was failing this task and I knew it, my mind and body were unwilling and unable to take me where I was scheduled to go. If my life had often made me feel like an unwilling passenger on my own adventures, then this was surely its' apex. Oatsy was a more level headed sort. We both knew how bad it was but his survival tactics were different, he barely looked me in the eye as he steeled himself and made for endurance. His mind and body didn't turn on him, in fact it was a stingray. Moments after his descent, a passing ray gave him a 'welcome to my world' greeting like a headbutt in a Glaswegian pub. His body in shock, his paranoia meter in overdrive, his dive buddy the blonde beast. It couldn't have been? He didn't think they took stun guns down here but to his addled brain it all made sense.

Just as Oatsys journey was beginning, I was making rapid plans to start ending mine. As soon as I found the rope, that ladder to the world, I was straight outta dodge. Fuck those fucking safety charts, fuck the bends, these people hadn't exactly enhanced my day so far so I was in no mood to start taking their advice. My head was spinning for, let's face it, a whole host of pretty legitimate reasons, so I forgave myself for thinking of Jaws when I saw the craggy, moustachioed face of the boat's skipper as I reached the surface. It was from him I took the overwhelming sensation of the day, and a life lesson i've carried around ever since. No one gives a shit. He certainly didn't give a shit when I recounted my tale of woe and pleaded for him to take me back to dry land. And he quite rightly didn't give a shit when I desperately told him I had forty grand cash on my bedside table that was his if he delivered me from this evil. Perhaps he'd thought i'd said rand. No, I laid and waited, Waited for what, if time is relative, was the longest period of my life. Waited, through pain, sickness, regret and fear, unparallelled in my life before or since.

I was pretty much dry heaving by the time Oatsy came up, but he still managed to emerge through a pool of vomit that lay stagnant on the waters' surface. He later told me that I had looked about seventy years old as his bloodied face first glimpsed mine. It made sense. The middle of the sea to the waters' edge was a complete blank. No longer trusting even dry land as my home, I took my first step on it and fell forward, face first into the sand. And lay there for hours. Until it was dark. "He's got to come with us" I remember someone shouting as they reboarded the truck, "He'll have to walk home through a load of kaffirs if he stays here". "leave it bru", a voice replied, "leave it".

THE END