Pseudo-Celeb

Thando referred to herself as a celebrity. But the truth was that she was a pseudo celebrity. She was famous for well… being famous. That brought both admirers and haters. Thando didn’t care. The way she saw it was that there was no bad publicity.

Being a pseudo-celebrity had its perks, like being interviewed for TV and radio shows, appearing on covers of magazines, being invited to high profile parties, appearing on ads and doing numerous fashion shoots. As a friend, I often tagged along when she attended high profile parties.

There was a flip side to that of course. Like this one time when Thando and I were shopping, a woman threw a tomato at her face. Now, if it were ripe tomato it would have exploded on impact and splashed all over her face. But it was not, this tomato still had a little bit of green left on it. It hit Thando square on the forehead, leaving a bruise.

‘You should be ashamed of yourself!’ The unknown woman was screaming while hauling tomatoes as Thando and myself. ‘You call yourself a role model? You are no role model! You are a bad influence to our children!’

Now what have I done? I thought while ducking from the stream of tomato missiles.

Mall security came to our rescue. They approached the angry woman with the intention to restrain her, but she started hauling tomatoes at them. I shouldn’t have been laughing, but I couldn’t stop myself. I thought it was so funny. I started wondering where this woman got all her tomatoes. Did she see Thando walking past, bought a bag full of tomatoes, ran up to her and started attacking? This was a premeditated attack. Clearly, this woman has been hoping and praying to run to Thando so she could tell her exactly how she felt about her.

Eventually, mall security managed to restrain the woman and they took her away kicking and screaming insults to Thando.

Thando and I suffered minor bruises that could be treated with an ointment and covered up with makeup, but our bruised egos took the hardest knock. By the time our attacker was whisked away, there were spectators gathered around and most had their smart phones out. I knew that by the end of the day our pictures would be all over Twitter and Facebook, probably with hashtags like #mallbeatdown #Thandobeatdown #Thandoattack. Fortunately, many people didn’t know my name, so I would escape the social media mocking. I was relieved.

Thando wasn’t so lucky, as I’d predicted, her attack was all over Twitter. She read most of the tweets with a smile on her face. She scrolled down her phone and often had to refresh as people argued back and forth on whether she was a good role model or not. A tweet-spat even broke out between two tweeheads who were on opposite camps. People who’ve never met each other and would probably never meet, argued and cursed each other on the subject of whether Thando was a good role model or not.

Thando responded by smiling. She looked at me and said, ‘I’m trending on Tweeter. I told you there’s no bad publicity.’

I looked at her phone and saw Thando Mava listed on trending topics.

That night she went to bed with a smile. She was on cloud nine. People were talking about her. And nothing made her happier than when she was on people’s minds.

Thando and I were made from different DNAs. I hated attention and she loved it with her whole heart. I dated men because of love and she dated men because of money. I enjoyed working and making my own money and she hated working and preferred other people making money from her, unless she’s being paid to be herself, as long as she didn’t lift a finger. We had nothing in common and sometime people asked me why I was even friends with her. In those cases, I often smiled at those people and told them that she’s the best friend I’ve ever had and I guess it’s true what they say: Opposites attract.

When I asked her whether she would press charges against the woman who attacked us, she shook her head and said, ‘No. I won’t. That woman was probably having a bad day, no need to make it worse.’

And that was the reason I was friends with her.