- Culture
- 14 Mar 18
The beginning of SXSW was strange. It involved a ferret and a pervert – and it only got stranger at Hotel Vegas...
The plump 45-year-old came in to view on 6th Street. He had Harvey Weinstein’s lazy left eye. His lips held a snarl. He was wearing a pair of denim overalls, two sizes too small. He wore no shirt underneath, occasionally exposing his puffy nipples from behind the chafing denim braces. It was hard to distinguish whether his drooping moobs were lactating a brownish liquid, a crusty pus, or if it was dried blood from excessive abrading.
With his stumpy fingers, he clasped a six foot long, bright baby-blue leash, with a cinnamon and cream, dark-eyed ferret on the end. The mammal was a few feet in front of him, dashing from side to side, its nose buried to ground, only sporadically lifting its head to see if there were humans, or objects to avoid.
It's at this moment that you realise you have come to a complete stop on the path, to gawk at this creature, as it sniffs around your shoes. Seconds pass, then the rascal decides it would rather sniff the bottom base of the adjacent public rubbish bin rather than your Nike Cortez’s. It wasn’t exactly a ringing endorsement of my scent, and that hurt.