“You call each otha’ nigga. Why can’t I?” the Afrikaner responds matter-of-factly.

In January 2012, I booked the lead role for a Barcardi commercial that never aired in a country whose only point of reference for me had been Lethal Weapon 2.

I’m in South Africa. I’m drunk. It’s 2.30am and I’m sitting at a picnic table on the second floor balcony of a bar in downtown Cape Town. I’ve agreed to meet one of the actors from the shoot for a night of binge drinking and bird chasing. He is a skinny scoundrel of Dutch ancestry — an Afrikaner — and he’s managed to pick a fight with a group of six black South African men. Now, to be fair, one of these guys was pretending to be drunk and kept bumping into me — aggressively. Not a casual oops, but the very gropey hands quickly moving over you kind of bumps. I later learn that this is a common pick pocketing technique in Cape Town. But right now, I’m growing tired of his attention and throw him back toward his friends — aggressively.

This is where our Afrikaner model comes in.

“Ey, why you touchin’ my mate, nigga?” the lone Afrikaner model says to the group.

With these words the table of six rise like Mighty Zulu Warriors and I know things are about to get flavorful.

“Ey, you don’t call us that!” the African leader commands.

“You call each otha’ nigga. Why can’t I?” the Afrikaner responds matter-of-factly.

I wasn’t sure how race relations worked in this country. I didn’t want to be prejudiced myself and assumed all whites hated blacks and vice versa — but was this the case? There didn’t seem to be an outright resentment, but certainly there was a guitar string tension in the air that was eager to be plucked. Was everyone racist or were the children absolved of the institutionalized bigotry of their parents at birth? And what the hell did they think of me — black, “mulatto” or simply American?

I’m squinting in disbelief. Not because I’m offended, but because of the utter density of this skinny piece of shits balls. He’s about to get murdered by these men, but he stands there like a bull-fighter. Or maybe not. Maybe he knew that even though apartheid was “over” he still possessed some sort of social invulnerability.

“You don’t call us that, ey! You don’t call us that!” the leader of the group of black men says to the Afrikaner model.

“Ey mate, I’m just callin’ you a nigga, nigga.” the Afrikaner goads.

I’m watching this exchange, beside myself, sipping their version of Corona. My eyes are burning with alcohol, my legs are hurting from walking all day and I’m learning how dangerous this city can be.

This night alone I’ve seen three random brawls. During the ten-mile drive, the hotel cabby warned me in a high-pitched David Lo Pan-esque squeal that I might get “Taken.” Finding him had been a furtive descent behind what I’d assumed to be the post for the hotel security guard but instead lead me into a dimly lit parking garage. A sketchy ordeal. I survive.

But right now I’m trying to keep my wits and Aikido lessons about me while I pollute my coherency with booze. I run some escape plans through my head but they all involve me either helping this Dutchman or leaping to the street below; neither of which I plan on doing. So, recognizing the inevitability of this situation, I decide to hunker down and go for the ride.

The leader of the group of black men keeps looking at me, perhaps showing some odd bullshit reverence because I am of fairer skin. This has weight here. The fairer you are, the better you are treated. It’s perverse, but I’m outside the Stars and Stripes which right about now is the best fucking place in the Galaxy.

Or maybe they’re just confused as to why I’m hanging out with this Dutch dipshit.

“Guys, stop it. He…doesn’t…know what he’s….Look, I know him, he’s a fucking moron.” I slur. “A stupid fucking model…” I trail off, attempting to assuage their indignation.

The leader of the African men takes pause at my remarks and barks with his heavy accent, “I will listen to him,” pointing at me. “not you!” he completes poking at the Afrikaner model.

I make a few more half-hearted attempts to quote some Martin Luther King Jr. or DuBois but nothing comes to me. Instead, I end up sounding like The Dude informing The Big Lebowski that this unchecked aggression will not stand. I let out a sigh and give an incredulous look at the street below, wishing I was back in the hotel watching that Seagal marathon I passed up for this. I rise from my seat.

“Listen, I’m getting out of here. You have your Vespa, right? You can find your way home?” I say to the Afrikaner model, walking towards the exit, not really waiting for an answer.

“Yeah mate. Lekker, baby. I’ll catch you tomorrow, ey?” he says with no concern as the army of Zulu warriors stands ready to rip his head off.

“Yeah.” I say curtly before chugging my beer.

I dart out of the bar. This weird place. Cape Town. It was not The United States of anywhere by any stretch. We had it good back home. I didn’t want to hear anyone protest a fucking thing about our country until they had set foot somewhere as raw as South Africa.

But now I was on my own, left to my own devices to figure out a way home. Between this downtown strip and my hotel was ten miles of Shanty Towns and economic blight. I was trapped and the only money I had had white American’s on it.