by Randy Ross
4) Bonders
•Born with good brain chemistry.
•Can connect with most anyone and be happy in most situations.
•Are good as friends, but boring as lovers.
•Examples: Anyone who manages to stay married more than two years.
•Favorite quote: “Let a smile be your umbrella on a rainy day.”
5) Barnacles
•Don’t have the stomach for dating.
•Always in a relationship—for better or worse.
•A bad choice for spouseless vacations; without a partner they glom on to you.
•Examples: Zsa Zsa Gabor, Elizabeth Taylor, Mickey Rooney, and other people married at least eight times.
•Favorite quote: “Needy people are the luckiest people in the world.”
I save the file to my thumb drive and slip it into my pocket. My headache is gone. Next stop, Cape Town.
CHAPTER FOUR: SOUTH AFRICA
Channel the spirit of the wind and champion the heart of the nomad.
—W. PITTMAN
Boarding the flight to South Africa, I scan the plane for seat 36C and don’t like what I see: baby, baby, baby, fat person eating something greasy, pimply teenager groping his girlfriend, unshaven guy with a bad cough, people blowing their noses and rubbing their eyes. The air is filled with a sour smell that is either sweat or a burning toupee.
Greece didn’t deliver, but at least it wasn’t dangerous. Now Pittman has me heading to another country like Venezuela, where murder and mayhem are national pastimes.
OK, the State Department says most people who visit South Africa get out alive. And my well-traveled cousin Joey said that South Africa is full of hostels, backpacker chicks, and blonde NGO PhDs in cargo shorts. I’ll have three weeks to prove him and Pittman wrong. By then, if I’m still miserable, I can say I survived the world’s biggest shit show and go home.
A slender torso is leaning into 36C. I pause and clear my throat.
“Sorry.” By the accent, I guess she’s Irish.
She glances at my Boston Celtics T-shirt and sherpa-lined yoga pants.
“American?” she asks.
“Lucky guess.”
“Anyone ever tell you that you look like Bruce Willis?”
When she leans back to draw the seat buckle low and tight across her waist, her breasts stir in her black sweater.
“I’m Randy,” I say, holding out my hand.
“Ha! I bet you are. I’m Jeanette.”
Her hand is warm and scented.
It turns out Jeanette and I have a lot in common. She likes to jog. I like to jog. She’s an executive at a computer company. I used to work for a computer magazine.
She applies lip gloss. We talk. I tell the truth. Mostly.
“You were a senior editor at Personal Computer Computing Week?” Jeanette asks. “I subscribe to that magazine. Must have been fun.”
“It was a nice gig,” I say. “We got to play with the latest tech toys. I had a little hat with a propeller on it. We had a good group of writers and editors.”
Actually, the day after I was laid off, I traded the hat to a homeless guy for a cigarette. In the five months since, only one coworker has e-mailed to see how I’m doing. Time to change the subject. “Where you headed?” I ask Jeanette.
“I’m going home to Joburg to see family.”
She runs a finger across her lips. I find myself running a finger across my lips.
As she talks about her company’s new mobile computing products and her cats, I am lulled by her voice and my thoughts drift.
Great mouth. Great hair. Great figure. No wedding band.
Flirty, age-appropriate, flying alone.
What’s wrong with her?
When we reach cruising altitude, a flight attendant asks for my cocktail order. I request a beer and turn to Jeanette. “Since you’re a loyal reader, your first five drinks are on me.”
“Clever lad. Sorry, I’m going to nod off in a few minutes,” she says.
“Oh, come on. You’re not going to stay up and party?” I ask. “The pilots said you were a lot of fun.”
“Ha, ha. I’m an old bird. Got to have a sleep. I’m meeting up with my husband’s parents tomorrow.”
I reach for my Ambien and order a second beer. Jeanette is out in minutes. I wash down a double dose of sleeping pills with beer number one. After dozing for half an hour, I wake up, wired. The cabin lights have been dimmed. Jeanette is asleep and her body is four inches from mine. It’s like we’re in bed together.
I trace her glossy mouth with an imaginary finger. I nibble her chin with imaginary lips, and then stop before I’m handcuffed by a real-life sky marshal.
After beer number two, I glance at Jeanette in her snug sweater, cram the empty into the seat pocket, and fall into a deep oblivion that lasts the rest of the flight.
At noon the next day, I exit the Cape Town terminal. A graying black man holds a sign that says “Randy Burns.”
“Welcome to Cape Town, my friend,” he says.
“I’m Sam.” I shake his hand and out of habit say, “I’m Randy.”
“I know, I wrote the sign.” He laughs and motions to a nearby minivan.
As we drive down a tree-lined highway called N2, Sam chats away in a soothing, singsongy African accent. “You’re going to have a great time. Everyone loves the Frisky Bonobo hostel. Even folks your age. Anyone ever say you look like Bruce Willis?”
Cinder block shacks appear on the side of the road. There’s a woman wearing a Rolling Stones T-shirt with a dirty sari around her waist. A group of children play with a stick, bare feet kicking up clouds of dust. Several men roll a tire toward the highway. One guy is carrying a red metal container with a long gray spout, a gas can. I recall warnings about necklacing, tire fires, and impromptu roadblocks.
The minivan speeds up.
The guidebook offers succinct advice about visiting these townships: Don’t. Ever.
Soon the shacks are replaced by office towers, restaurants, and parking lots flanked by a high, flat mountain. I begin to relax.
“Table Mountain,” Sam says. “A good hike. The waterfront here is also nice. Lots of beautiful ladies, Mr. Randy Randy.”
He raises his palm toward me and I return the high five.
We pull up in front of the Frisky Bonobo on Long Street, the main drag in the backpacker part of Cape Town. Hidden away from the office towers, the area is crammed with Western-style bars and African-themed restaurants: Mama Afrika, Five Flies, Bushman. Like many buildings in the area, the Bonobo has a large balcony that would be perfect for throwing Mardi Gras beads. But now the streets are empty except for a few black teenagers milling around in soiled yellow smocks that say, “Security.” It’s two in the afternoon.
Sam and I sit in silence for a minute, and then he gestures toward my door. I get out of the cab, grab my bag, and pull out some loose cash from my pocket.
“Put that away!” Sam is no longer singy or songy.
I duck, freeze, and get back in the car. I reach for the cash.
“For fok sake, man. Keep your hands down!” He snaps. “Don’t be flashing money around here.”
“But it’s the middle of the day on a main street.”
“Just listen to me, boy.”
I hold the cash below the dashboard and count out 200 South African rand, about thirty dollars. Sam whips it into his pocket.
A gaunt, black man with rheumy eyes and a red skull cap calls out to us from an alley: “You want some crazy, good fun?” A kid in a soiled yellow security smock walks by ignoring the rheumy man and us.
Finally Sam points to my door. “OK, my man, time to go.” Then he says in a softer tone: “Don’t worry, friend. It’s safer here now than it’s been in years.”
That night at the Bonobo, I head to the living-room bar and order the house specialty, Carling Black Label. At the bar, girls in halter tops. On the couch, girls in short-shorts. On the balcony, girls in ripped T-shirts. Averag
e age: twenty-two, even with me in the room.
I glance at my watch and notice what is either a large freckle or a liver spot on my wrist. I stash the hand in my pocket. In planning this trip, I knew I was going to be traveling with people young enough to be my kids. To prepare, I had my back and chest waxed, and every day, I shave my head to hide the gray. But I’m not fooling anyone. Bruce Willis is in his fifties.
I start to feel annoyed, isolated, unwelcome, like I’m back home among the twenty-something kids who’ve overrun my neighborhood, who mock people my age, give us an ironic face slap by embracing all the worst crap from our generation: Ron Jeremy, the Green Hornet, Mountain Dew, beer in a can, Pabst in anything, clothes with holes, tie-dye, Hush Puppies, headphones worn outdoors, ski hats worn indoors, hoodies on people who aren’t defendants or gym teachers.
These kids reject our best stuff: chest hair on guys, skirts on girls, money, shoelaces, size thirty-two waists, size two dresses, caring about your career, caring about your job, caring about anything.
Recently the twenty-something baristas at Starbucks, cashiers at CVS, and bouncers at the Clink Lounge have started addressing me as “sir,” as if I’ve been retired by society, yanked by life’s hook, like I’m one of those guys who can’t get a hard-on without a prescription.
Lenny says to accept it; the kids have taken over, like we did in our day. Not helpful, Lenny. The young guys get the attention of women their age, of women our age, of Madison Avenue. Forty-something men are invisible. I glance at two girls on the couch wearing Minnie Mouse T-shirts and pink shorts. Their belly buttons sparkle and wink. I wink back.
In the Bonobo living room, I spot one other middle-aged bald guy standing by the foosball table, hands in his pockets. His eyes are tired. His face is unshaven and flecked with gray. His unripped T-shirt says “Ozzie Softwear.”
He sidles up to me, hands over some cash, and says, “Hey, mate. Order us a couple coldies. This one’s on me.”
He introduces himself as Steve from Sydney. He tells me he just sold his T-shirt shop on Bondi Beach and is traveling around South Africa for a few months. “Thirty-eight and semiretired,” he says.
“I just got a severance check and I’m traveling for a few months myself,” I say. We high-five.
Turns out we’re both taking the same bus tour up the coast in two days.
I point out two girls with corporate haircuts and black leggings.
“Dutch birds. Untouchable,” he says. “Late twenties, I’d say. They’ll be on the tour too, but won’t give a guy the time of day.”
“And them,” Steve nods toward two girls and a guy wearing beige ski hats, “I wouldn’t even bother with them.” The guy has a T-shirt with an American flag in the shape of a snarling pit bull. The girls are giggling and spitting beer on each other.
“America’s finest,” Steve says. “The guy’s name is Matt. A dipshit. The girls, Tara and Ivy, aren’t so fit as you can see. They’re on the bus tour too. Aren’t we lucky?”
I consider canceling, but recall the refund policy: “Don’t even think about it.”
Steve suggests a change of scenery, an Irish bar across the street called Kimba O’Reilly’s.
We pass the Bonobo’s front desk where I notice a sign on the wall: “After dark, we recommend hiring a taxi instead of walking.” Steve ignores the sign. I follow.
The scene at O’Reilly’s resembles the scene at the hostel: same crowd of annoying kids, same old tired music. The only difference is there are now more guys.
When Van Morrison’s “Moondance” starts to play, Matt, the American kid with the snarling T-shirt, starts crooning into a beer bottle and moves onto the dance floor. Even though his Teva sandals are held together with safety pins, he made good time getting here. Periodically he bops over to the two untouchable Dutch girls and thrusts his bottle in their faces to get them to join in. They ignore him. The guy is a douche but he’s got balls. The back of my head starts to itch. I scratch and detect some stubble.
Steve and I are nursing our beers at a high-top table when two attractive black women approach. “I am Naledi,” one says. She is tall and slender.
“And I am Ola,” the other says. She is shorter with round cheeks and straightened chin-length hair.
I wait for Steve to make a move. He moves on Naledi, gives me wink, and leads her onto the dance floor.
Ola is twenty-one years old and has a singsongy African accent like Sam’s. Her skin is at least 80 percent cocoa.
“Having fun?” I ask.
“Always,” Ola says, dancing in place.
“You like Van Morrison?”
“Who?”
She drains her beer, grabs my hand, and leads me onto the parquet floor. She shimmies. I shimmy. She musses her hair. I muss my stubble.
Ola is wearing a low-cut T-shirt. An exposed bra strap looks like a ribbon, a gift for the right guy. She brushes against me and the oxytocin starts to flow.
Some might say Ola is voluptuous. I would say she is about five four, 135 pounds with a Body Mass Index of twenty-three, the upper range of normal. But her melónes grandes are the kind you don’t find on a slender woman. True, I usually go for super-skinny types, but tonight I am open to all options.
Ola smiles and leans into me. I feel her breasts upon me, intent and urgent.
In recent years, I’ve developed mixed feelings about large breasts. On young women, a full rack was a taunt, a tease, a reminder of my expired youth, something I was never going to see, touch, or kiss. On women my age, I didn’t want to see, touch, or kiss them. They were best supported, secured, and clothed. In the bedroom, I preferred women my age to wear a bra or a T-shirt, a covering, something to leave what were fabulous two decades ago to my imagination. The dying octopus experience with the old woman on Cyclonos was a cruel reminder. Perfectly nice woman, slim even, but the expiring breasts depressed me.
I pull Ola closer. These are twenty-one-year-old breasts, upbeat, tight, no play in them.
Nearby, Matt is grinding with his two chubby girlfriends, Tara and Ivy.
The song ends. Ola lifts her head from my shoulder and we look into each other’s eyes. I feel the spirit of the wind, or something along those lines.
In college, I dated a black woman, but she was African American, light-skinned, decaf with two creams. Ola is African African, double-espresso, sweet sensory overload for a guy who rarely drinks coffee.
I press my lips to hers, tongues snake, wet, hot, and hoppy. We head back to our seats just as Steve is leaving the bar hand-in-hand with Naledi. Neither one looks back.
Ola and I sit out the next few songs and never mention Steve or Naledi. Ola tells me that she’s a hairdresser and that she is vacationing in Cape Town for several weeks. She says she is staying with her sister, who lives about an hour away by cab. If that’s true, returning to her sister’s would cost about 200 rand, or thirty dollars. Ola must make a lot of money as a hairdresser.
The waitress brings more beers. I reach into the decoy travel wallet around my neck to pay.
“So,” Ola asks, “Have you been robbed yet?”
I become aware of the real money belt strapped to my waist and stare out the window.
“I can tell by your expression that you have not,” she says. “Let me offer some advice:
“You must be careful in Cape Town.
“People will rob you, stab you, and shoot you.
“They will put knock-out drugs in your drink.
“They have HIV.
“Don’t trust colored people.”
Does that mean I shouldn’t trust her? I put down my beer, my lips still tingling from her kiss.
“See over there?” She points out the open window to a spot across the street. “That’s where I was robbed.” She adjusts her bra strap, and then points to a little scar above her right breast. The scar is tiny, barely visible, and looks as old as she is.
Why is she telling me all this?
Her cell phone beeps. She taps a
few keys, and ignores me while waiting for a response. When it comes, she looks at the ceiling and closes her eyes. She doesn’t share what’s going on and I don’t ask.
“I’m hungry,” she says, reaching for my hand. “Let’s find something to eat.”
As we leave, she asks me for twenty rand, which she gives to the doorman.
“What’s that for?” I ask.
“We’re not allowed in here,” she says.
We? Who is “we”?
Her phone beeps again. Tap, tap, tap.
On the street, she gestures for a cab. “I know a romantic restaurant by the waterfront,” she says.
“What about the restaurants right here?” I point across the street to the Impala Bistro, the Mandingo Grille, and the Rhino Burger.
“They’re filled with kids from university, too noisy,” she says.
After all of Ola’s “advice,” I’m not about to drive off with her to some strange place.
We look at each other: South African standoff.
The secret to any negotiation is being prepared to walk. And so I do.
She follows, grabs my hand, and says, “OK, let’s go to your hotel.”
The universe loves me again.
But as we cross the street, my thoughts swirl like farm animals in a Kansas tornado.
South Africa’s HIV rate is almost 20 percent, so the odds are one-in-five that she’s infected.
What if the condom breaks?
What if the second condom breaks?
What if the third condom breaks?
At least she looks healthy.
Maybe fate brought us together—dashing guy, voluptuous girl, he from one world and she from another.
Her phone beeps again, but this time she ignores it.
Who the hell keeps texting her at three A.M.? Her sister? Her friend Naledi? Her hair salon?
Her pimp?
Nah. Cousin Joey once said that hookers never kiss on the mouth.
She puts her arm around me and the oxytocin flows again. I put my hand on her abundant hips, and then think of Naledi and her little cheetah hips. The flow of oxytocin slows.
In my room, we sit on the bed, thighs touching. “Turn off the light,” she says. I comply. We sit in silence. I stare into the darkness, aware of her breast against my upper arm.
