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 “What the devil are you raving about, you idiotic freak?” he screeches at me in a surprisingly high-pitched voice, like he is spitting forks.

The Rag had scooped an exclusive interview with the Prince of Darkness, the Fallen Archangel, Michael. Judging by the state of his dark rimmed, bloodshot eyes, he was coming off a bender of note. The interview is a crock. Iffer is purposely evasive; surly and disrespectful of my professional journalistic status.  I’d had enough of his bull and figured it was time for me and him to set a few things straight. After all, there’s only just so much he can do to stuff up my life and by my reckoning he is short on options.  

“What, Michael? What?” I challenge him. “Are you telling me there will be hell to pay? Come on, man! You can do better than that.” 

Recently, The Sunday Tribune reported on an interview Oprah scored with the Virgin Mary. "Other than a few billion bucks and a few biological bits, what’s Oprah got that I haven’t?" I thought. "If Oprah can do The Virgin why not I Mr Loose Iffer?" It was real easy to get his attention too. I got on my bike, headed north up the N2 in the direction of Sibiya Casino, cranked it into the illegal zone, let go the handlebar, sat up in the wind, spread my arms out wide and screamed, “Come get me, you mother!” 

I had hardly dropped the first grand at the casino when my cellphone rang.

"Mr Rhydar.” he said by way of greeting. It was a statement. 

“Yes?” I replied, “Shit!” 

”What?” 

“Uh, sorry. Not you. This bloody fruit machine is chowing me something fierce.” 

“Oh. Mr Rhydar, this is Mr Loose Iffer. You left a message, I believe.” I tell him I did and just then the machine locks three diamonds through the centre pay-line and goes berserk. Undercover Gambler’s Anonymous agents disguised in black T-shirts printed with the slogan GAMBLING IS ADDICTIVE close in from all sides, bent on my reform. I'd hit a thirty-seven cents jackpot! I shooed them away by planting my right size 10 in the crease of an ample backside so substantial that the odds of gender identification were about the same as those in favour of the house.

Iffer agreed to a rendezvous behind one of those curtains at Teasers in Springfield Park where you buy private lap dances. His only condition was that I pay. So far, I was in only for the cover charge. One look at him and those girls were falling over themselves to give it away. Evil, it seems, not money, is the greatest aphrodisiac of all. Iffer has some kind of special power too because the bouncers were keeping their distance. If I touched a Teaser's girl I'd find myself sampling the gravel in the car park.

“Get me your friend,” he says, pushing his current topless muse to the floor, brushing her hands away from his zipper of his black, one-piece, red-caped jump suite before turning his attention back to me. “Mr Rhydar,” he says, “you are the most irreverent person I have ever met.” 

I thought that was pretty brash coming from a guy who had told God to stuff it, but I let it go. “There may be some truth to that,” I concede. “I once came across a thesis entitled ‘A Theology of Non-Violence’. It didn’t amount to much more than cerebral soup, but it concluded that hell is a necessity for man but an absolute impossibility for God. What do you think, Michael?” Actually, I wrote the thing when I still fancied myself an intellectual, but he didn’t need to know that. 

“Only God calls me Michael, you piece of shit.”   

“Oh, you are good. Loose!” I counter, suitably impressed by his assertiveness, “but I would have thought a powerful man like you would be a whole lot more erudite, not given to the common vernacular; more prosaic. How on earth do you expect to grow your following if you speak to the lowest common denominator?”  

“Loose! Loose? Who's your fucking Loose?" he screams. " I’ll do you one if you’re not careful. You may address me as Prince, or Mr Iffer, but never, ever as Loose. Only my mates call me that.  And God knows you are no friend of mine - despite the fact that many would argue the point, you festering pile of dung!"

“Oh come on, Loose. You’re overwrought. Why don’t you relax and answer the question. How’s your lap dancer?”  I look down at the back of the bobbing head of the girl who appears to be conducting a medical examination of his genital region. I think, "STD."

“I’m not your fucking Loose, get it?” He is snarling, top lip curled back, distorting the neat line of his pencil-thin mustache, but I'm grinning, tempting fate, which is like a really big sin, I’m told. The girl mutters something about 'marshmallows', which I don't catch, but her head stops bobbing. 

I raise my hands in mock supplication. “Okay, okay. Keep your cape on.” I try a different tack. “Are you aware that Oprah scored an interview with Mary?” 

“Mary? Mary who? I know lots of Mary’s.”  The girl's head is bobbing again.

“Mary. The mother of Jesus. You know, The Virgin?” 

“Oh, that Mary. The Virgin one. Not the one that works for Branson. Right." He chuckles like the sound of breaking ribs when you fall off a bike and 200 kg of furious steel and carbon fibre rolls over you. "I remember when she went to her old man and said, ‘Daddy, I’m preggies’. Fornication was a hell of a big thing back then; a real burning issue, you might say. Shit, you could get stoned for it. Or was that for adultery? I forget. Her old man was shocked, I tell you. ‘You’re what?’ he screamed. ‘Who did this? That good for nothing Joseph, I suppose! I’ll have his balls!’ ‘No daddy,’ she told him, ‘it was not Joseph.’ ‘You little tart!’ he howled at her, louder still. ‘You are betrothed to Joseph and you’re handing it out like cookies behind his back!’ Mary was distraught, I tell you. ‘It wasn’t a man, daddy, I swear.’ ‘What? You think I’m mah shuga? Huh? Huh?? And don’t tell me you picked it up from the toilet seat because we’ll not have those for another century at least!’ ‘Don’t be silly, pops, although I have no idea what a toilet seat will be,’ she smiled back at him, sweetly twisting him around her thumb as only a daughter-child can do to a father. ‘It was God. He did it. Or it was that angel that came down from heaven because I did feel right tingly all over at the time. Promise. Scout's honour.’ Her old man sat back, scratched his crotch and looked her square in both her eyes. ‘What's a scout, my child?' he asked suspiciously, distracted by the thought of the great wealth to follow after he registered the patent for his toilet seat design at the local synagogue."

Even with all the mixed metaphors, my finely tuned journalistic mind grasps that Iffer is spinning me a load of that with which he had labeled me. So I ask him, "Do you need the 'gents'?"

"What the fuck are you on about now?" He looks at me like I am mad. He's right too...

"Well, it's just that you seem to be taking the piss..." I tell him, which was when he let fly with a flattie that would have laid me out was it not for my lightening fast, biker-like reflexes. Righting myself I ask "Are you telling me Mary was not a virgin?” to distract him.

Back on his demonic version of terra firma, he composes himself, leans back, folds his arms and grins wickedly. “I’m not saying!"

This wasn’t going anywhere. It is obvious he needs prompting. The girl's head is still bobbing, only faster. “Will you please just answer my question?” I ask.

“What question?” 

I sigh. “Is hell a necessity for…Oh never mind! Can you at least tell me why is my life in the toilet?” 

Iffer is confused. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“Someone put sugar in my tank.” I'm grinding my teeth. Hard. My jaw and neck muscles are chorded like Bruce Lee in the throws of an orgasm. He can see that I'm pissed off. I notice that Iffer's neck muscles are doing the same thing...

"It wasn’t me,” he says, very, very quickly, breathless, shuddering, adding, "She did it. I told her not to, but I think she's out to get my job."

The fear in his eyes is genuine. For a moment I even feel sorry for him because I know who he is talking about. She does that to a man.