Make or Break

‘Good morning ma’am, is that Jess?’

‘Yes,’ I said down the apartment phone. I could hear laughter and cheers and the sound of a car radio in the background.

‘This is security at the front gates. I have Jimmy here.’

I heard a cacophony of voices repeating, ‘Hi Jess! Hi Jess! Hi Jess!’ I giggled, told the security guy to let them in, grabbed my daypack and skipped out of the door.

Jimmy and his friends only had a day pass to the festival so we were leaving early, and when I stepped out of the apartment building at 7 a.m. and crossed the paved drive to the waiting van the air was fresh on my bare shoulders. In the van were Gus and Bryn from the art studio, their girlfriends, the Hispanic kitchen hand from Sylvie’s and another guy who was unbelievably good-looking whom I’d not met before. They were all jammed in with their tanned limbs, big smiles and their rough-and-ready stubble (not the girls). Every other available space was filled with inflatable rubber rings, water bottles, boxes of beer, colourful towels, straw hats and spare pairs of board shorts. It was an explosion of summertime supplies. I sat next to Jimmy and was introduced to the people I didn’t know.

‘Can I borrow your phone?’ Jimmy said.

I raised my eyebrows at the phone in his hand while trying to find enough space for my feet.

Jimmy rolled his eyes. ‘Ian changed my phone to Greek and these bastards,’ he shot his friends in the back a good-natured scowl, ‘won’t lend me theirs so I can figure out how to change it back.’

‘We’re Team Ian!’ his friends hooted.

I giggled but handed over my phone. I was definitely Team Jimmy.

After we swung into a café and picked up iced coffees and fresh juices we were on the road amid in-jokes, singing, friendly ribbing and laughter. We made only one toilet/refreshment stop at a dusty roadside place that looked like it ought to have been on Route 66 in the 1980s. The heat as we clambered out of the van and tossed all the tumbling summer paraphernalia back in was intense even at 9.30 a.m.

An hour later we turned off the highway onto a dirt track and then drove through a grassy field to join a queue of cars, pick-ups and vans all looking like ours: dusty, full of tanned people and inflatable dinghies and emitting music and laughter. It took forty-five minutes in the slow-moving queue to reach the entrance of the festival. We handed our tickets to a girl dressed in a tie-dye vest, cut-off black denim shorts, cowboy boots, two flower leis, one pink, one yellow and a straw panama hat with another multi-coloured flower lei wound around the crown. She had gold temporary tattoos down her thin, tanned arms and greeted us all in Afrikaans first then English. Similarly dressed men and women directed us to park in a field on the edge of a high bank.

‘Wow,’ I said, once I’d extracted myself from the sweaty van and stood on the edge of the field.

The view down to the festival site was like nothing I’d ever seen. The river was wide and flowing gently, with one side bulged out to form a tranquil lagoon, perfect for accommodating floating concertgoers. It was a browny-golden colour, not murky like the Thames but clear, and festooned with hundreds and hundreds of inflatables in every size, shape and colour the Internet could provide. There were unicorns and pandas and killer whales, small orange dinghies and floating armchairs. Five girls in bikinis lay on their stomachs on top of a double blow-up mattress. There were traditional lilos in all sorts of neon hues and rubber rings in all dimensions from one-person size all the way up to a giant one that had ten people straddling its circumference. I even saw a blow-up paddling pool floating on the river with some guys who were rapidly sinking but seemingly not caring.

Along the grassy banks people had set up various brollies and sun shelters, and it was here that people kept their cool boxes full of alcohol and food. The stage was a wooden platform jutting out over the water with a huge canvas canopy. Music floated out over the valley and mingled with the whoops and cheers of hundreds of tanned and happy people all splashing and drinking and dancing. I trotted back to the van, loaded up with as much as I could carry then followed Jimmy and Bryn, who each carried a handle of the very heavy cool box down the dusty path towards the water. Within twenty minutes we’d found a spot next to another group of Jimmy’s friends, set up our shade shelters, peeled off our clothes to reveal our swimmers underneath, reapplied suntan lotion and were mixing drinks and cracking open cans of beer. Jimmy introduced me to so many people I couldn’t remember all their names, and within half an hour we were floating on the river, beers in hand, hats on heads, bumping into people we knew and people we didn’t.

‘I think we should raft ourselves together so you don’t get lost,’ Jimmy said, pulling me towards him. He’d brought two dinghies, one for him and one for me and we’d filled the bottom of each one with water to keep us cool.

‘Good idea,’ I said, gazing across the hundreds of people in inflatables laughing and drinking around me. ‘Are there snakes here?’ I said, noticing a group of people who were standing in the waist-deep brown water at an ingenious floating raft bar; a square sheet of wood had been attached to floating barrels and on top of this, plastic bottles of various spirits with proper shot measure dispensers had been gaffer-taped upside-down to the side of an upturned crate. On top of the crate in cartons of ice were the mixers. A collection of people stood in the water and leant against the floating platform with plastic cups of crudely mixed cocktails like they were standing at the bar of a pub.

‘Yes, heaps of them,’ Jimmy said, tying his dinghy to mine with a plastic flower garland he’d been given by a giant lilo of floating girls.

‘Great,’ I said, scanning the crowd of death-chancing revellers.

We floated in a large group, all taking turns to hop out and do a drinks run back to the cooler boxes on the river’s edge. I came back from my turn, my arms full, the beer cans freezing against my skin, to a large group of girls on floating whimsical creatures all giggling and laughing and giving Jimmy and his friends a lot of attention. I passed the drinks around just as the gaggle of beauties sailed off in their flotilla of long limbs, whitened smiles and laughter.

‘They’re all Jimmy’s exes,’ Gus said as he cracked his beer open with a satisfying hiss.

Gus’s girlfriend slapped his arm. ‘Don’t listen to him,’ she said to me, obviously mistaking our relationship for something it wasn’t.

‘He’s talking shit,’ Jimmy grinned and drenched his mate with a strong swoop of his arm.

‘Mate, you’ve definitely slept with half of them,’ Gus said and bobbed down in his giant floating rubber ducky to avoid another wave of water from Jimmy.

‘Half?’ I said, clambering back in my dinghy and looking back at the girls. ‘There’s nine of them. Have you slept with 4.5 of them? Which one did you half-sleep with?’

Jimmy laughed and splashed me with a wave smaller than the one he’d shot at his friend.

‘Did you only put half in?’ I said, ducking from another splash.

After many hours of drinking, floating and talking I looked over at Jimmy, who was lying back in his dinghy appreciating a moment to himself. His resting face was one just on the verge of smiling; the kind of smile where you’ve just seen a good friend unexpectedly or you’re waiting for the punch line of a joke. I looked in the minimally reflective bottom of my empty beer can and arranged my face into various resting positions.

‘What are you doing?’

I turned to see Jimmy giving me a very strange look. ‘I’m trying out a new resting face,’ I said. ‘I think my current one says “you’re an idiot” and I’m trying to put a more positive vibe out there.’

Jimmy frowned then yanked my dinghy close to his. He jammed his head right next to mine so he could see himself in my beer can mirror. ‘What’s mine?’

‘I eat crayons,’ I said, and Jimmy tipped me out of my dinghy.

When the heat of the afternoon hit its peak, Jimmy and his friends started making moves to get out of their dinghies and rubber duckies and head to the mermaid pool.

‘What mermaid pool?’ I asked, making slow progress through the busy river, dragging my dinghy behind me.

‘It’s a pool at the bottom of a waterfall. It’s really deep and cold, so perfect to cool off before we go to the main field.’

The main field was where the evening part of the festival would take place. Apparently, some semblance of health and safety kicks in at this point, where they’ve realised that inebriated people, darkness, rivers and loud music are not a good public welfare mix.

‘Where is it?’ I said, as we reached the water’s edge.

‘Up there,’ Jimmy said, pointing to a steep rocky mountain upriver.

I looked up and worried about the size of this waterfall. ‘Is there a way to freshen up without jumping off a waterfall?’

Jimmy grinned. ‘Nope.’

‘Do you ever think the crevasses look like giant rock vaginas?’ I said, looking up at the juts and ravines of rugged rock in the looming mountains as we made our way up the mountainside.

‘A rock vagina?’ one of Jimmy’s friends said. ‘Ow.’

‘Are there snakes up here?’ I asked as we trudged upwards, collectively puffing.

There were seven of us in our group, but hordes of others had had the same idea and we trekked up over the dusty rocks in a convoy of people hoping to sober up a bit before starting to drink again.

‘Yes,’ Jimmy said from behind me. ‘This is Africa. You are just going to have to assume there are snakes everywhere we go.’

My heart embarked on snake-induced palpitations. I tried to calm myself with the rational tête-à-tête I’d had with many a local: they are shy creatures and will keep away from humans (except the puff adder, who is so lazy it will just lie wherever the fuck it wants and attack you if you get too close); locals hardly ever see them (except for all the people who see them all the time in their fucking gardens); you’ll hear it hissing as a warning and know to stop walking (unless you’re walking in a convoy of loud drunk people all singing and laughing and telling jokes), and my favoured rationale . . .

‘They have anti-venom, right?’

‘Yeah,’ Jimmy said. ‘ ’Course.’

‘Except for the coral snake,’ Jimmy’s friend puffed. ‘No anti-venom for that one.’

‘No anti-venom?’ I said, scrambling over a big rock to keep pace with the girl ahead of me. ‘Why would they have a snake with no anti-venom?’

‘They’re very rare,’ Jimmy said. ‘Don’t worry.’

‘A guy saw one yesterday,’ the guy with the comforting snake information said. ‘On the edge of the river near the stage.’

I turned to glare at Jimmy, who wrinkled his nose and shook his head.

After a hot twenty minutes, where the last ten were so steep you had to grip dry twisted branches and have help getting up and over crumbly jagged rocks, we reached the top covered in a fine ochre dust. A tiny breeze gave infinitesimal respite from the late-afternoon heat. We walked along the crest of the ledge until we reached an area where we had to go down a steep rock face. I could hear the rush of a waterfall as we helped each other down with fireman’s grips and instructions on where to place your foot. Once we’d navigated the brittle rock face, we joined a group of others waiting their turn on the top of a smooth boulder that jutted out over the mermaid pool, its depth apparent by the dark blue of the water, which became almost black in the centre. A tumble of frothy water fell from a high ledge to the right of us, into the pool.

‘. . . three, two, one!’ a group of friends chanted and a guy in neon-green board shorts ran off the edge of the smooth boulder and into the abyss shouting something in Afrikaans on his way down that made everyone laugh.

As Jimmy and his friends moved into a sort of line, I inched past all the people towards the edge of the rock.

‘Fuck!’ I said and shuffled backwards.

‘You OK?’ Jimmy said, holding my elbow protectively.

‘I’m not jumping off that!’

The boulder we were standing on was large and bulbous, not allowing you to see the part of the pool you’d land in. You had to leap out far enough so that you didn’t land on the rock you’d just jumped off. It was like an ant trying to leap off a rotund apple. I could see the far edge of the pool, with its jagged rocks, and I could see the ripples of the people who’d just jumped. But the jumpers only became visible, swimming towards the left where the mermaid pool became shallow and people lolled about in the waist-deep water, five seconds after I’d heard their landing splash. I’d counted. I’d also counted how many seconds between leaping off the boulder and landing in the water. To obtain the length of the drop with the seconds between jumping and landing, I’d also need the jumper’s body weight and a physics degree. I had neither, but by my calculations the estimated fall was TOO FUCKING FAR.

‘WOOHOOO!’ a girl hollered as her friends finished their countdown and she launched off the rock, her tanned quads flexing with the effort.

She disappeared and far too many seconds later I heard her touchdown splash. From my dizzying height it seemed the drop was at least nineteen stories high. Of a very high-ceilinged building. But I could have been paranoically wrong. It’s been known to happen.

‘What if I leap too far out and land on the rocks on the other side?’ I said as we moved forward, my heart hammering.

Jimmy looked amused. ‘You won’t.’

‘How do you know?’ The jump was a leap of faith and I was feeling particularly faithless.

‘Because you’re not Wonder Woman,’ he said. ‘There is no way you’d be able to jump that far.’

‘I used to be very good at long jump, I’ll have you know,’ I said. ‘Before I grew these anchors,’ I muttered under my breath while glancing down at my boobs.

One more person and it would be Jimmy’s turn. And then mine.

‘OK,’ Jimmy said, as the girl in front was counted down. ‘Just watch me and do the exact same thing.’

I nodded. The girl in front leapt. Moments later we heard her splash and then when she came into vision, swimming to the edge of the pool, Jimmy’s friends began their rowdy countdown.

‘Ten, nine.’

‘You can do this,’ Jimmy said in my ear, then he grinned and moved into position.

‘Five, four, three, two,’ they hollered.

Jimmy glanced back at me, gave me a wink then on ‘one’ took a three-step run and jumped. The last thing I saw was the muscles round his tanned shoulders rippling as he disappeared beyond the edge of the boulder. It seemed an age before I heard his splash and then he came into sight, his powerful arms pulling him through the indigo water. He reached the shallows and looked up with a grin.

‘Go Jess!’ he yelled. ‘You can do it!’

I stood, frozen on the smooth boulder, inches from where it curved downwards towards the water. ‘I can’t! Oh my god, I can’t do it!’

‘Yes, you can!’ he hollered.

People behind me started counting down from ten.

‘Which part do I jump off?’ I shouted back.

‘Nine, eight!’

‘Like which exact bit of rock? What if I jump too soon?’

‘You won’t! Just do it!’ Jimmy’s voice echoed off the sheer rock walls.

‘Six, five!’

‘What if I jump too late?’

‘Four, three!’

‘Somebody ought to make some kind of “jump here” marker!’ I screamed. ‘If I survive and I ever do this again I’m going to do some Pythagoras and get back up here and make a jump mark so no one ever jumps too late and skids down the rock face on their back!’

‘Hurry up!’ Jimmy said, through laughter.

‘Two, one, GO!’

‘Jump, Jess!’ Jimmy called. ‘Just jump!’

I felt immense pressure, my heart was going mental. I was sweaty and dusty and boiling and terrified. The crowd behind me started chanting.

‘Jump Jess, jump! Jump Jess, jump!’

‘There’s a coral snake!’ Jimmy’s friend suddenly yelled.

‘WHAT?!?’ I ran at the edge of the rock, grabbed the seat of my bikini bottoms so as not get carved in two, and leapt. Time slowed, and I felt like I was falling and falling and falling and never going to reach the pool, when suddenly I plunged through the surface and sank into water so cold my breath got knocked out of me. Everything went dark. I plunged deeper and deeper.

‘Oh well, I did kind of like my life,’ I thought, as I sank lower and was enveloped by cool darkness. ‘I never got to sleep with Bradley Cooper, but I did get to see Matilda six times and I really liked that day at school when I was nine and I wore that polka dot ruffle skirt and David Sanders told me I looked pretty. Now where’s this light at the end of the tunnel everyone talks about? Actually, where’s the tunnel? Death needs to come with a map. Oh, hang on; I’m going back up. Oh OK. No light this time. I still have a chance with Bradley!!’ And I broke through the surface and saw Jimmy’s grinning face, his eyes sparkling with pride and his arm outstretched. I grabbed his hand and allowed him to pull me into the shallows, checking quickly that my bikini was still present and doing its job.

‘I did it!’ I was so overjoyed at having survived I leapt at him and threw my arms around his neck. ‘Oh my god, I can’t believe I did it! Did you see me?!’ I looked in his face, and became aware that my breasts, with only a thin layer of wet lycra, were pressed up against his warm chest.

‘Yes, I saw you,’ he said, looking into my eyes.