… a house of cards.

 As I sat in the playground between the shadows and candlelight, the glasses of wine from a certain Medoc region complemented the take-out burgers, flamed grilled of course, that were the sum of available choices for dinner in a blacked-out suburb. The comfortable heat of the dying sun gave way to a cool, crisp evening carried on a soft breeze. It brought with it the realisation that the seasons have changed once again and that time had somehow become an issue for me again.

 

While the man beside me could never be more than just a friend, his body has come to serve a longing hearts’ hunger, and the abyss that has formed in-between is a mutual balance of conflicting desires and dreams. We both know that it isn’t real – and because of this realisation – what we have has become comfortable. Like my recent foray into the world of publishing, I find myself all too suddenly at a cross roads with a choice between that what I want and that which I need to be made.

 

With an independent income severely reduced from a lifestyle of option to one of necessary survival, the intrinsic remoulding of my life’s view point has meant practical solutions are needed to get me through the next few crucial months. And so, for the first time in my adult life I have had to find a job to pay the rent. Well not in a 9-to-5 kind of environment anyway. So I sat down and decided that where I want to be and what I need to do to get there leave me with one choice: entrepreneurship.

 

And so, with a wide net of inferred friendships where the degrees of separation are often not 6 but 1, in under a month I was presented with two very definite and viable offers by publishing companies that met what I was comfortable doing in a context I was open to working with. I took the first because it seemed like a good offer and included my two passions in life: polo and sailing as work subjects. Not much of an effort being paid to do something you love and already know is it?

 

But with a sense of growing unease these past few weeks I have doubted my decision. I think it’s pretty much agreed that ‘open minded: good. Judgemental: bad.’ But are we being too quick to judge judgement? Perhaps judgement is not so much a snap decision as an early warning detection device. If it is instantly clear that a person, a place or even a profession is not for you, is it better to ignore your better judgement and read between the lines or, should you judge a book by its cover?

 

I think the thing that I fear most is what my two strongest supporters over these past few months will think. Having never been a quitter this early on, a distorted sense of loyalty persists that I make one last Herculean effort to save the relationship and business arrangement before moving on. In an ordinary world this would be an admirable trait, in a Spaniel or a whore, but when you are trying to make you own way in an unforgiving society where success is measured by different rules, reality asserts itself and the right decision needs to be made. Quickly!

 

With many of my closest friends tied up in their own 30-something tribulations between closing multi-million Rand BEE deals, managing stratospheric head-hunting assignments, jet-setting around Europe, and alcoholic binging chased by one night stands, I find it difficult to solicit their advice. Not because they won’t give it willingly – but because I know that it would just be the blind leading the blind. And so, following sage advice, I’m going to sleep on it. And do my sums carefully this time.

 

After all, my mistakes are mine to make. So is enjoying the success of those decisions when it comes. In the meantime I’m having fun with a recently discovered box of books that I thought had been lost along with a few DVD’s, and a vintage Henry Mancini album I can’t listen to – a sexual souvenir of a jazz player I once dated – but was never able to get rid of because it reminded me too much of who I wanted to be rather than who I ended up as.

 

Like the sense of restlessness that has me sleeping until noon on the weekends, drinking endless cups of ear grey tea, and knowing that a certain someone like you is looking for a less certain someone like me. Even if it is only because I have great taste in music.

… and like faith unseen or felt it’s as real as the tears she cries.

A few weeks ago as I sat drinking coffee with a good friend of mine he started telling me about someone he knew who had committed suicide recently. As I listened to the story of this man the words started to swirl around my head like plumes of smoke at a downtown jazz club hazing the worn velvet banquets and triggering a distant memory of my own. It turns out we were talking and thinking of the same man and the realisation left me cold with missed conversations and half-fulfilled promises.

While I could never claim a deep friendship with him, we had shared a few memorable moments when he was my Pilates teacher and then later as my yoga teacher. Over time we became as close as two strangers in Jo’burg can and we politely passed the time in casual conversation while in the sauna at gym that didn’t amount to much but didn’t make you feel that you had been too rude or non-committal as you queued for coffee at a favourite barista in Rosebank. We always promised to do more together but always found ourselves otherwise entertained.

As I lay there his death sunk in and I started to think about my own future. In a city that moves so fast that we get our Sunday papers on Saturday, how did any of us know how much time we had left? There is so much I hadn’t done: I had never been to Miami, I hadn’t finished painting my bedroom, hell my VISA bill still wasn’t paid in full. Sometimes I felt like I was barely living anymore.  And with my recent flirtation with dating I even felt different. As I lay there thinking of things past I could help but wonder: in a city where everyone is dying to make a connection – can a relationship bring you back to life?

The thing that got me the most with my ex-Pilates teacher was that he was the most gorgeous man I have ever met. And by that I mean personality not physical. Sure he had a perfectly defined body honed through years at the Royal Ballet Company, a dick that any size queen would have sold their Madonna collection for, and a smile that could melt even the most cynical hearts. But he was something more. He was HIV+ as well and in his last few years was left isolated by a sickness after years of being pursued by man, women and beast.

Sure when you have that feeling of new love’s butterflies in your stomach you pretty much feel bullet proof. After all you’re nobody until somebody loves you. But when you put all your self-worth in what others tell you, you start to become like an addict – always waiting for that next compliment, that next kiss or even that next date to quell the craving of an addictive heart. And when you’re led to believe in your moment of need that they want what you want – but they don’t – you have to look within yourself to calm the anxiety of self-worth and doubt.

I don’t won’t to be a hypocrite and say that I’ve learnt something from his death – and that everyday I’m going to live like it’s my last. That I’m going to grab life by the balls and tell it that I’m not so easily defeated because I can’t. I’m struggling to make it through each and every day but I do know this … I’m going to be more careful for what I wish for. No matter how bad my day is, how painful it is not being able to say what you want to the person you desire most, or even realising that sometimes love just isn’t enough to get you through the dark patch in a faltering relationship. Everything is relative.

Somewhere out there is an inconsolable mother who has lost her son. As she sits beside a cold autumn grave, questioning what else she could have done to have changed it all, her questions float like dreams and are lost to the wind. At the time of Easter when death and life have such secular undercurrents in our lives, we have to give up our quest for corporeal answers and have a little faith in something that will get us through that dark and stormy night. I know that so many people berate me for saying this out loud: but what gets me through it all is the belief that somewhere out there someone like you is looking for someone like me.

And like faith unseen or felt … it’s as real as the tears she cries every night for her gorgeous son who knows love and death. That will be his legacy for me.

 

… 29 bottles of wine on the wall, 29 bottles of wine.

As a social drinker I very seldom buy wine for dinner especially when I’m eating alone. But after two bottles on an empty stomach I ran the risk of crossing over from a boy who does lunch to one losing it very quickly. And with the bloom off the job that a million girls would kill for I was left rethinking it all. When your expectation of the new job, a new man, and a new beginning don’t quite pan out you start to doubt yourself. Including your sanity. In the moment when you crane your neck backwards for the last drops from your last sip to fall back and down your throat onwards and downwards to anesthetise a discounted heart you start to question everything. The story of my life. Was I doing the right thing? Should I let him go too quickly? Where will this take me?

As I sat back in the haze of a bedroom filled with cigar smoke, the feint smell of a second bottle of wine and cheap sex I realised something about myself that I didn’t want to admit. In life there have been very few obstacles. Up until a few years ago life seemed to be an effortless progression from one fabulous job to the next, one great anonymous fuck to another and one suit fitting to the next at my ancient Italian tailor. But then I joined the family company and things started going wrong. I fell in love and that ended after a few years with his cheating on me. I lost my direction and focus and become a man about town. And then the company stumbled itself and we lost pretty much everything. But now everything seems to have opened up again.

Choices. Since birth we have been told we can do anything we want. Be an astronaut, the head of publishing company or even a work from home entrepreneur. There aren’t any rules anymore and the choices have endless. And apparently they could all be delivered right to your door with just a phone call and credit card. But is it possible that we’ve gotten so spoilt by these choices that we’ve become unable to make one? That a part of us knows that when you choose something: one man, one great apartment, and one amazing job another option goes away. Are we a generation of gay men that can’t just choose just one from column A? Did we have too much to handle or was my indecisive heart right: can we have it all?

Drunk and insanely horny even after an afternoon of fucking I got off the merry go round that had become my indefinable experience with the new guy. After days of not having text messages or phone calls returned he suddenly contacted me. Only then to disappear again for days on end. A million questions ran through my head but none of them could ever be validated because they could never be asked. Perhaps he did have a lot on his mind as he had explained and needed time to sort things out or perhaps he was just ignoring me because somehow I couldn’t fit into his neatly constructed world but either way I found myself scrolling through my contact list on my mobile phone and hitting the ‘delete’ button to his profile. ‘Are you sure?’ it intuitively asked. As if knowing the alcohol level in my blood stream and sober penchant for regret.

But I was sure. I know that I deserve a man who will love me – fully. And not keep me at an arms length because he’s still sorting through the break-up and baggage of his last relationship. Sure we all need time but when the timing is right – your have to let go and take a leap of faith into the unknown. Even if joint real estate keeps your past relationship present you have to build over the foundations and start again. Each time getting stronger and surer. But as I sat there, drunk and alone, I realised that this was the temporary choice I had made for myself. In opening up, yet again blindly and with faith, I had opened myself up to much more than just a great man. I opened myself up to a great life. Full of promise and infinite choices. All my mine to make.

I’m thirty years old, told by many that I’m very good looking (but would settle for better than average when examining my reflection in the shaving mirror), and have the capacity above all to be fucking extraordinary. Sure in the morning I’ll be sober and reflective on life in general but before then I’ll have posted this online. My new job takes all my considerable strengths, natural passions and places me in a position of influence amongst the very things that I excel at. Sure I don’t have a man to share it just yet but with very little effort could that not change just as quickly as a 24-goal polo match drawn in the 6^th chukka? I know that timing is everything and that someday my dreams will come true. How many others could boast the same?

Until then I have the promise of a new morning, a possible hang-over and half-eaten bacon, mushroom and English mustard sandwich to keep me company through the night. Even if it’s all after 6pm, filled with fat, carbohydrates, and tannin you have to ask: who gives a fuck right? It seemed like a good choice at the time.

… uhm Houston we have a problem.

Despite the fact that there are over 8-million people living in Jo’burg, it often seems to be an island surrounded my murky waters. Even more so when you’re in love and you feel ship wrecked and alone. Times when even the most resourceful survivor will feel the need to put a message in a bottle or on a certain voice mail just so that you feel connected with something bigger. Naturally I wanted to spend every waking second with the new guy but a voice of caution told me that I was perhaps getting excited over nothing.

Understandably people lead busy lives and even more so when your life is chasing targets set by other people. A few stray comments that seemed like loose threads have slowly weaved together an all too familiar pattern of a distressing picture. When a 37-yr old man, even though apparently out of the closest, chooses to remain ambiguously straight you have to wonder where the cracks are and what are being used to cover them. As much as I wanted to engage my new romance, he wasn’t done fully with his old one, and every part of me was telling me to break away.

And so in the early hours of the morning when I’m laying wide awake I turn to DVD’s to keep my mind off him. Perhaps an unwise choice of movies was a tale on how to lose a guy in 10-days. All the classic mistakes women, or perhaps emotionally immature gay men, make when they meet a man whom they would like to get involved with. As we reached 36hrs and still no response from my last text message I thought to myself that perhaps I had failed to get the message that he was sending.

The 1820-settlers had to wait up to 6months for a response from home. It had taken me 6-mnths to get the message that I wanted someone there to share this next and exciting stage of my life with. And as my heart still flutters with a week old romance I was even more certain that I couldn’t wait another minute. Are all these improvements in instant communications really helping us or when it comes to matters of love, I couldn’t help but wonder do actions speak loader than words?

The next day, as my eyes flickered awake and I sipped yet another cup of coffee, I tried to mentally prepare myself for what was going to be a watershed day of final meetings that will inform the future at my new company. Suddenly overcome with a sense of urgency I decided to take action. I knew I was breaking all the supposed rules which told me to be less available in order to seem more desirable, I called him to find out if we were still on for our dinner date at his place later that night. While knew I was taking a chance it was, after all, a calculated risk.

But as the phone rang and rang and rang and eventually went to voicemail I realised that this was the last message I would leave for him. As cute as he is, as funny and charming and sensitive a man I would love to have in my life there comes a time when you have to realise your own self-worth. He may have been the perfect Mr. Right-Now but somewhere out there is a guy like you waiting for a guy like me. And in a moment like that you realise that right now, you’re Mr. Right.

… moral relativism.

“Tie me up tie me down. Make me moan real loud.”

Something overcomes me in the magic hour, that time when the sun has set but it’s still light outside, and I never realised why until tonight. 10yrs ago I sat in the dark, and it felt as if she was right next to me telling me a secret that no one else knew about. There was something in her textured words as they floated on the hot, dry air that evening as the sun set over a mountain range and in the distance you could hear the predators coming out to stalk the watering holes that stirred a need inside of me. We all have the need to feel special and the spark of desire had now fanned the flames of lust. We would be alone here in this tented camp in the middle of a game reserve just north of Waterberg Mountains. Just him and I.

“Take off my clothes no one has to know. Whisperin’: ‘I wanna feel a soft rope burn. Wanna feel a rope burn.’”

It started out innocent enough when late one night we drove the staff back to the main lodge in his open topped Land Rover from the tented camp. Illegally I drove since I was neither an employee of the lodge and he had had a few beers. It wasn’t the first time I was driving and since I knew my way around the dirt roads well enough, it became our thing. Under the light of a soon-to-be full moon I could see him looking at me from the corner of my eye. It was a look that I had seen before but never from him. It was a look of open lust that betrays the body’s primitive need to connect with someone on an emotional level but in the basest form possible. But between the drive there and the drive back the cold reality of his fear sobered him up. And while the fire had been curtailed, the flame remained deep inside.

“When you walked in the room you knew just what to do. You could have gone from door to door but you knew just where to go to. Come into my velvet room and tell me fantasies.”

He had just left with the last two guests for the week along with the staff that all had the weekend off. It was his suggestion that we stay out here rather than return to the main lodge. He to his staff quarters and I to the family bungalow built on land within the game reserve. With the fire wood already packed, the kerosene storm-lanterns already hanging in the open-air dining area and in the one tent where we would sleep I sat waiting for him to return. About half-an-hour later I heard the V8 engines of his Land Rover in the distance. Perhaps it was unrealistic expectations but he never ran from the car and into my arms. Rather he kept me at arms length for most of the evening before dinner. A dinner that I prepared and he cooked on the open flames of the braai. Domestic bliss was a thought that crossed my mind.

“The passion in your voice I wanna hear as you start to tell me. While you’re at it take the blind fold tie it gently on me. Don’t wanna see but feel the things you’re gonna do to me.”

And since he showed no interest I doubted whether I had read the signs right. What did I know at 20yrs of age anyway about the great world out there with my limited experience as a gay man? Hardly a word was spoken between us as the sky turned from ice-cream hues to burnt oranges to shades of black. In the deafening silence of nature I could hear my screaming heart trying to reach out to him telling him that I adored him. That I was in love with him. But he seemed a gargoyle in the semi-darkness of the dying flames. I collected the used plates, washed them in the small kitchen at the back. He helped clear away and just as I was finishing I could feel the heat from his body nearing mine. He stood behind me and as I turned around I could see tears welling up in his eyes and his hands shaking. He leaned in to me. And I took him in.

“Tie me up tie me down. Make me moan real loud. Take off my clothes no one has to know. Whisperin’: ‘I wanna feel a soft rope burn. Wanna feel a rope burn.’”

As he took a fistful of my hair, he pulled my head back exposing my neck. Slowly he started at the small of my throat and working his way up in a confused kiss/licking motion and as he bite my earlobe I felt my knees give way in total surrender. Half undressed and undressing some more we just managed to get to our tent before the animal instincts that dominated our hormones overcame any sense of reason or common decency. Ripping open the last few buttons of the shirt that I was wearing that he couldn’t undo he pushed me backwards onto the bed. In no time my shorts were entangled with the heavy hiking boots that I was wearing. I lay there naked while he was still fully clothed. Slowly easing himself down, he straddled my chest, unbuttoned his khaki shorts and force-fed his hard, thick cock into my mouth.

“One in the mornin’ I’m feelin’ so free and sensual. Lyin’ here wearin’ just my imagination for you. Any sensation will do. Can you feel the warmth of the candlelight embrace your body?”

I lost track of time after that. I could have been there only a few minutes or a few hours. I do remember him easing his cock out of my mouth and telling me not to move. The breeze on my damp chest caused goose bumps to cover my entire body. I wasn’t sure if the shivering was the cold or the sexual tension that had formed like a funeral pyre within. Ready to engulf my sanity in flames. And then his darkened silhouette turned back towards me. As he eased himself back on top of me I could feel that he was now totally naked and as he took both my wrists into one of his hands as the other bound a soft rope around them he continued to rub the length of his body against mine. With the tasselled end he fixed it to the metal frame of the bed and I was now a prisoner of his sexual hunger. And some part of me shivered. Not because if was cold but because I wanted to be a sexual object to be used.

“I’m feelin’ the hot candle wax drippin’ down the small of my back. Do you want to know what my tongue feels like? You like that?”

In the single flicker of light from across the room the shadows gave rise to a momentary thought that I was no more than a replacement for his hand while his mind masturbated to every suppressed fantasy. A feeling that was subtly reinforced by manoeuvring me into as many blow-up figurine positions he could think of. Eventually I sensed rather than felt his whole body begin to quiver and then spasm as he found the release he craved. Afterwards I could feel the sheets damp with the sweat as we had slithered against each other during sex. As his arms encircled me and held me I could feel his beating heart bursting against his chest while his breathing started to become normal again. As I dozed off I could remember his smell carried on the heat of his naked, sweaty skin. He smelled masculine.

“Tie me up tie me down. Make me moan real loud. Take off my clothes no one has to know.”

As I stood in the open shower looking out towards the grasslands in front of the tented camp, his words as we woke up were slicker than my still distended asshole. The pain that had filled me up in the darkness slowly ebbed away when I realised that I will live my life as my heart needs rather than as my environment dictates. I had one night with a fantasy but what I really wanted was a lifetime with reality. He may have extracted a promise never to reveal this to anyone but I had already felt that the world was opening up to me and no matter how many hangers-on he fucked in his room between now and the end of my holiday none could fulfil his need quite like I could. As I rinsed off the lather of the soap, dried and walked out to the room to get dressed he lay there still. He looked up at me and we were bound together forever in the one night of carnal exploration. He had his release. And I had …

“Rope burn”

…. no one ever forgets great head!

 “Erotica/Romance.”

In 1992 three interrelated happenings put me down a path that I have never managed to get off of. A book was published that read more like a whores-who diary of sexcapades across the country between a women named Dita and a guy named John, a CD that was loosely based on the book, and a young impressionable boy who had his first experience with another boy. Almost a lifetime later the boy that became a fuck buddy in boarding school has moved on to a wife, children and a great job at an IT company and I have a great collection of bespoke suits that hang in my cupboard at home.

“My name is Dita. I’ll be your mistress tonight. I’d like to put you in a trance.”

Since I was overseas when my class had their 10-yrs reunion I didn’t go. I guess I didn’t feel too guilty either since I see many of them at the various old boys’ events through the year: Hilton vs. Michaelhouse rugby, the arts festival, Old Boy’s polo, Christmas mass, fund raisers and of course various school things that I somehow get onto my calendar. But every now and again I see him at a distance in a crowd, or standing in a queue for the boerewors rolls, or even at the club playing tennis on a Saturday morning. About a week ago I sent him a copy of the book, a copy of the CD, and a letter that told him pretty much how I feel whenever I see him although he doesn’t see me.

“If I take you from behind, push myself into your mind when you least expect it. Will you try and reject it? If I’m in charge, and treat you like a child will you let yourself go wild? Let my mouth go where it wants to?”

While I’m not holding out for a phone call, since his best friend is my ex-Squirrel, I have spent an extraordinary amount of time when alone thinking about what he might be thinking about. Since I started stripping away the layers I’ve come to realise that perhaps he was my first archetypical love and the one that I’ve based my whole sexual choices upon? In the end he was a prefect, first team rugby, swimming, and squash, and not quite the most popular boy but certainly one that many strived to emulate. But at night he wasn’t the asshole that plagued the corridors during the day. Quietly slipping into my room after lights out we would lie after sex for hours. Who was using whom?

“Give it up, do as I say. Give it up and let me have my way. I’ll give you love; I’ll hit you like a truck. I’ll give you love, I’ll teach you how to … ahhh”

Since our nocturnal nooky started I never seemed to be bothered much by the older kids a few forms a head of me. Not that I was ever bullied but every now and again you got pulled indiscriminately from a line and made to do something humiliating in front of a crowd. It had something to do with breaking you down and rebuilding your character in the shape of the school. And while we were never caught, I don’t think that it was a secret either, and as such I became an extension of him. One night, I remember we had just started kissing and things started getting pretty hot when there was a knock on my locked door. Panic!

“Once you put your hand in the flame you can never be the same. There’s a certain satisfaction in a little bit of pain. I can see you understand, I can tell that you’re the same. If you’re afraid, well rise above I only hurt the ones I love.”

It was a friend in the same year as I who was bored and wanted to talk. We often did this sometimes over a packet of biscuits or crisps and wasn’t anything unusual. For 45-minutes he crouched in the cramped hanging space of my cupboard naked until a hamstring muscle cramp gave way to a small whimper and out the closet he tumbled. As my heart stopped for what seemed like a forever we both sat looking at my friend sitting at my study desk as he looked from me to my lover and back again. In the few seconds it took for the truth to dawn on him, and before either of us could say anything, he got up and left us to the night. He never said anything to anyone and always when ever he came back to my room checked the closets first before sitting down.

“I don’t think you know what pain is. I don’t think you’ve gone that way. I could bring you so much pleasure. I’ll come to you when you say. I know you want me. I’m not gonna hurt you. I’m not gonna hurt you, just close your eyes.”

It’s funny how a song can remind you of something that seems so far back in the distance. How your past and present are not connected but somehow meet at a certain point? And as I realise that my next confession stretches perhaps is over the line of decency but on those hot and humid summer nights deep in the KZN Midlands as the sweat gathered on his naked, hairless chest I learnt something that amazes people to this day. By taking your time during foreplay, learning what stimulates your partner, taking them on a physical journey that torments the pleasure of sex, will always awaken something in them that no one else ever can. It also means that they’ll remember you for a long time.

“Only the one that hurts you can make you feel better. Only the one that inflicts pain can take it away.”

After all you can forget a bad kisser, but you can never forget the best head of your life.

Erotica

… people like us.

While not quite caught between the moon and New York City I do find myself caught between what I know and what I’m afraid to admit to those around me in my new surroundings. In stripping away the layers of pretence that had somehow built up over the years, either through self-delusion or unrealistic expectations, I promised myself that in starting over I would start off with a clean slate. I would be me … honest about who he is and what he wants. Authentic is a word that has been banded about of late and expect it to be bastardised by the masses searching for a new raison d’être. But it seems to fit so well when everything else is either too tight or shabby-baggy.

But that is easier said than done I have discovered when dealing with a survivalist mind-set that perhaps will not, rather than cannot, relate to something outside their frame-of-reference. A sense of smugness creeps into their voices as they change their posture to a caricature of a puffed up dove, often inserting their thumbs into the loops of their belt to emphasise their point, and pontificate about the frivolity of those that habitat the tree lined suburbs of Northern Johannesburg. Why pay R150 for a chocolate cake from Anica’s Deli when Woollies also has one just as good for R50?

While the part of me now living to a budget would agree with the latter the aesthetic inside would gladly pay the former. But who is right? Should I be judged for my own choices just because they don’t conform to something valued by someone else and if so doesn’t it speak to their own prejudice rather than my silliness? The uneasy feeling festered for a few days and eventually came to a head a week later as I sat down to lunch with two relative strangers in familiar surroundings of a downtown dinning room. A members-only club with a legacy that spans 120-yrs and is the elitist tie that threads us together.

I find myself trying to fit in to my new surroundings when really I was born to stand apart. And for feeling bad when I don’t conform to their standards whatever they are. Perhaps it’s just me but I can remember a time when we were young and Marlow Thomas sang to us about accepting each other and our differences. But then we got older and started singing a different tune. We stopped celebrating each others’ life choices and started qualifying them. Is acceptance really such a childish concept? Or did we have it right all along … when did we stop being free to be you and me?

A few days later I found myself sitting at a favourite barista in Parktown North leisurely reading the weekend edition of a certain pale pink newspaper, sipping my coffee slowly and every now and again breaking off chunks of my chocolate and hazelnut muffin to pop into my mouth. As I sat there I realised that I may have had to move a little further away to get nearer to who I need to be but there isn’t a reason that I can’t ever not accept who I am even if others can’t or wont. Think about it … a coffee and muffin: R38; weekend newspaper and magazine: R138; the feeling that you belong: priceless.

 

… don’t let’s ask for the moon, we have the stars.

As I cried myself to sleep this Sunday past flitting in and out of the dreams filled with his sky-blue eyes, the way his lips curled up in the corner when he watched something new and exciting for the first time, and his overwhelming affectionate nature. Dreams that will keep alive his memory and serve as a reminded that nothing should be take for granted. Because like him he was in my arms one minute and a few hours later he was dead.

I remember that first weekend that we met each other in the parking lot of an overhanging service garage on the N1. Up until then his life was in Pretoria and mine was Jo’burg. But that changed too as he came into my life forever. Isn’t it funny how something so strange could become so familiar so quickly? It took me a few nights to get used to having him there but then like so much his rhythmic snoring ended up being a comfort.

Strong, wilful and independent we fought over what he liked and what I wanted for him. I’d like to believe that I was right most of the time but for the most part he got his way. I made less mistakes with him I think than I did with others in the past and that was testament to the bond between us. Even at the end of our time together I could look at his handsome face and guess what was going through his mind.

Openly affectionate, even in public, he would always demand my utter attention even when I was busy with something or someone else. I guess that being the baby of the family he was spoiled when he was younger and this carried through into his adult life. Whinging and whining and throwing tantrums when he didn’t get his way but the reward of seeing such pleasure in his face when he eventually did get his way made you want to give into him.

For 3yrs I was blessed to have him in my life and being there at the end will always be one of those turning points for me. The day I lost him was the day I became a man. Because in losing a treasured soul I learnt something more about mine. My capacity to love is equalled by the pain inside and no small part of my heart can ever love again like I loved him. There will be others in the future but he was my first. He knew that I loved him. I could see that in his eyes. Unquestioning and trusting to the end.

And it is that look … that last final look as I took out his drip and let him rest that I will remember. It will take me to my grave as it did him to his.

 

… if you reach the end of the earth you’ve gone too far.

As we left the boerewors curtain and headed out into deep cattle country of the Vaal Triangle, I have come to accept that the changes in my life are perhaps for the best, but as yet unrealised. I was off for 3-dys training on our most advanced CNC Milling and Turning machines as well as for a crash-course of the software management necessary for operating these kinds of machines. Leaving before dawn I witnessed something that I haven’t seen for a long, long time. The dawn rising like a melting ice-cream on a hot summer’s day as you stroll from Sea-Point to Green Point.

 

Vanderbijl Park is like a quant European country that you visit as a stop-over between the big tourist cities. The music is 10-yrs behind, people still smoke in restaurants and offices, and life is uncomplicated by things like iPod-envy or café-fatigue. Having arrived just as people were setting up their tools for the start of a full-day shift at our supplier’s premises I was like a fish out of water. Here men are men, the women have moustaches like their Dad’s and the kids don’t wear shoes to school. As far as a novelty holiday goes – I loved it. The question would neither be foam or cream – but what is a cappuccino?

With expectations such as these you can imagine my surprise that even the most hard-core of employees were not only courteous but went out of their way to help us in every possible way. While not the chivalrous gentleman that every girl, or guy, dreams of the basics were there and as every person worth their salt knows you can work with less to have more. But is this an environment that I could adapt to and even thrive within? You hear of people selling everything up after a lifetime of success and finding meaning in something foreign. But no baristas’ in a 50Km radius … hmmm …?

As the day progressed, I found myself sitting in the mild-spring sun eating my hamburger slightly enticed by one of the Brahman studs that sat next to me. I started to think about that eternal quest of ‘happily ever after’. As progressive as our society claims to be there are still certain life targets we are all supposed to hit: marriage, babies and a home to call your own. But what if instead of breaking out in a smile you break out in a rash at the thought of never achieving the impractical? Is something wrong with the system or with you? And do we really want these things or are we just programmed?

I blame Ogilvy and his ad for the Silver Cloud Rolls-Royce. They created the aspiration that wanting something more was okay. And while my capitalistic pursuit leaves me in marketing envy of a certain whore/genius who leveraged her amateur home made sex-tape with an ex into a big-budget horror flick, a self-titled perfume deal, and a reality TV show on Fox Network that was big in Japan. After all when you’re big in Japan you can make it anywhere as a brand. With apparently very little experience she has become a mini-economy and every plastic/porno-production gay’s hero.

But I guess it is the same with all recovering addicts – when you know better you try and do better. Whatever the previous vice, shedding it makes you a staunch advocate against it. So like Bono trying to get debt in third-world countries erased that is my new raison d’être – erase my burgeoning self-debt. Because when you think about it material consumption for the sake of cavalier amusement is becoming a dangerous thing. With a growing middle-class desperate to break in rather than stand out places like 24-Central, 44 Stanley Str. And the bistros and café’s in Parkhurst are perceived to be exclusive.

And from one extreme to the other: sushi with my editor, polo-gossip-pimp, and all round friend. It was a long overdue conversation about our converging interests and diverging aspirations. They say that nothing is certain in life – only death and taxes – but one thing is for sure: I always have a great time with her. Whether it’s drinking in some marquee while watching a boring game, falling from polo-ponies in some rural backwater, or understanding that we do what we go because we can. And because we’re good at it.

Everything else is choice.

… what I’ve done.

In the darkness of the cavernous room, the smell of fresh paint and new leather took my very active and somewhat secret sex life to a new level of pursuit. And what started out as an innocent goof late one Friday night over drinks with a friend turned into contributing to the design of a perfect sex club. Here in this world of night where the daylight of reality never comes, and you can, without opening yourself up to yet another bad blind date and disappointing one night stand you get to live out dark fantasies of pleasure.

4-mnths later, I was at the opening to this invitation only meat-market where inhibitions are left at the door in the discreet suburbs north of Sandton but way before Fourways. Not my first time to something like this, it was my first time in what was described on the invitation as an ‘upmarket venue where strangers can meet’ and ‘be comfortable with no strings expectations’. A sex club by any other name is still a place where married men, committed men or men in denial frequent to get their rocks off before heading home to their real world of respectability and restraint.

And as I turned the corner trying to get through the crowded passageway without being groped I saw him. My ex standing there talking to some whip-thin queen wearing baggy jeans and a grin that unnerved me. Even though it has been almost 2 years since we parted ways, and I can pretty confidently say that I’m over him, every now and again I go somewhere, meet someone, or see something and I am reminded of him. I am haunted not by the way that he treated me by cheating but by the way that I tarnished his memory afterwards.

In the past few weeks as I’ve had to strip away layers of pretence that have built up over time and with people I’ve come to realise that turning 30-yrs old was a good thing. The angst of my twenties has been replaced by a sense of growth or maturity if you will that leaves me comfortable with who I am and where I’m going. And the mistakes of my past that I can learn from and not be bound to repeat the same relationship mistakes over and over again. It was the memory of hope rather than the man that made my chest tighten.

As I turned away from them and walked as quickly as I could, I felt the bile rising up in my throat and I realised that it was my fault entirely. For some reason I just couldn’t let go even though I had let him go. It was then that I realised that I was in an S&M relationship with the Squirrel. Sometime later I plucked up the courage to venture back to that particular area and in the darkness of the place I saw this young boy strapped into a sling and being fucked by the Squirrel amongst other men in a group.

But this pain was something different. I remember the pleasure of being in love with him rather than the pleasure his sex gave. In love-relationships there is a fine line between pleasure and pain. In fact it is a common belief that a relationship without pain is one not worth having. To some pain implies growth but how do we know when the growing pains stop and the pain pains take over? Are we masochists or optimists if we continue to walk that fine line? When it comes to relationships how do you know when enough is enough?

I think that when you get to the point that you’re asking the question you might have reached or passed it even. At that point you have to look beyond what you feel and more what you know. What I do know is that even though I’ve moved on … he is a part of me like the memories of a certain teacher telling me I wouldn’t amount to much in life. That stranger that you met at a friends’ place that you wanted in your heart but no matter how hard you tried you somehow fell short of your expectations. Or making a relationship work that shouldn’t have been started in the first place when your head was screaming ‘No!’ but your heart was crying ‘Yes!’

The city can become such a lonely place when you’re single, but when you have friends to fall back on, you realise that having
that someone special in your life is great but sometimes they come with too high a price.