Smuts was quiet, as it always was on a Sunday, and I was hungover, as I always was on the weekend. I was sitting up on the lower end of the campus steps closer to Smuts and Fuller, people-watching and telling myself: it would only be for two days, no they were not coming to stay and yes, they would leave and go back to Kasi. I could see Rodney in his oversized torn jeans and shaggy hair shuffling his feet up to Smuts, looking forlorn even from a distance. From where I sat I couldn’t see his shoes but I guessed from the way he walked that he was in the flips-flops he had been wearing the day before.
My parents would arrive in a few minutes and I couldn’t be with Rodney. I couldn’t go back to his house and smoke zol or drink too much. I had to stay close to res., introduce my parents to the friends they would approve of, take them around the medical school and then the rest of campus, pretend I had a girl I liked in Fuller and then watch with both guilt and relief as they went back into their world without me as the buffer they needed.
Almost as soon as Rodney walked away, my parents arrived, my mother a little overdressed for a simple visit, both trying to look cheerful. My mother wrapped her arms around me as if I’d been gone a year and my father put his hand on my shoulder with a firm grip, holding on. He still couldn’t believe his son was here—almost as if he’d come to see for himself, to make sure.
As I had anticipated, two days felt like ten. I took them around, they bought me things my mother thought I needed: more pants, another pillow, stationary. She had made a list, walking around my room taking notes and saying things like: “Had I known, I would’ve brought more soap. I was just at Makro last week.”
When they asked about a girl I said, “We’re right across from Fuller, Ma. I’m not worried,” she smiled adoringly at me. My father looked down at his plate and said: “Of course. Of course. Every doctor needs a good wife.” To which my mother pursed her lips.
I suppose the three of us tried not to think of what that meant about the two of them. I cupped my glass instead of holding its stem between my fingers and it was enough to get my mother fussing again about proper table etiquette. My father gave me a knowing smile; always the son who could take attention in the right direction.
I smoked too much zol anyway but I smoked even more the night after they left, sitting on the floor in Rodney’s house listening to music that was too bad and too loud.
That was probably Cape Town in a nutshell: booze, zol, loud music at Rodney’s house, and then being hungover and catching up on work in the library on weeknights right up until closing time. I loved it at the time, the freedom and carelessness of it. Sometimes the memory of that time is hazy but that’s just fine. It didn’t end well, so I like to remember the fun. The way it was easy to be with men, the way I never saw my friends from high school anymore because I was on a different campus and at night I was in a different part of town. The way my parents stopped visiting for some time because, I think, it was too long a trip for them to take together. They left me alone (except for the four phone calls a week) and for a long time Cape Town let me be me. Until it couldn’t work anymore.
It was not until well into the first semester, after I had settled into school and a routine that I finally had my first sexual encounter at Rodney’s house.
The guy was a newcomer. He was visiting from England, he said, and was “unimpressed with the gay scene in Cape Town.” His name was Danny and he had a refined, upper class English accent, which to the trained ear sounded thoroughly put on, but with a soft voice and an easy smile. He was about a few centimeters shorter than I, with long delicate hands, a pretty nose, green eyes and eyelashes so long they touched the tips of his blonde strands: very attractive and quite sure of himself.
Danny’s manner was a pleasant surprise since most guys who came to drink and party at Rodney’s house were generally either aloof or just too high to engage. He opened the door for me and smiled in such a welcoming way that I instantly warmed to him. He didn’t appear to be on drugs, though he later said something about going only “where the good drugs are.” He put his hands on his hips and moved his eyes up and down, taking me in slowly. “Well, you’re different,” he concluded with a grin.
I thought: “Ugh, not this again.” But I could see by the look on his face that he meant different as in exotic and not as in too strange, like other people. I followed him willingly.
When Rodney saw us walking through the house he flashed me a knowing smile and said, “I’ve told Danny about you,” but as usual he was already so high that I couldn’t get an answer from him about what he had in fact told Danny. All I got was: “Danny is a family friend.”
Danny tossed his locks and added with a sly smile, “He was not lying.”
I felt rather shy around him at first because he seemed so sure of himself and said the word ‘gay’ as easily as if he were pronouncing his own name. He motioned with his head for me to come outside and I happily obliged, intrigued by this stranger who unlike the rest of the party, didn’t seem turned off by me. On the balcony he offered me a cigarette but I declined. I was already eyeing the zol he had rolled up and placed on the table for me.
Between puffs Danny and I made attempts at a conversation. Elbow on the railing, he examined me carefully, as if he were trying to decide which one of the books he had read would explain me to him.
I didn’t need to do a lot of thinking: Danny being the first guy around here to show any interest in me, I was going to go along with his looks and his lines until something happened between us. In the end he must have seen the conversation for the loss that it was, because now he put his hand on my arm, stroked it suggestively and said impatiently, “Finish that thing and let’s go find a room!”
I rushed through my spliff. Yes, you could say I was overeager. Unlike my friends from high school and just about everyone around me, my sexual frustration seemed only to rise with each week. By then my friends seemed to have abandoned their plan to have us all rooming in one flat, their attentions now having turned to a few very pretty Fuller girls they had met in the dining hall. All of them had found lovers as easily as picking apples from a tree—it was uncomplicated and they could do it in broad daylight for everyone to see.
Even though my eagerness had done nothing but intensify, I was the only one still carrying the same pack of condoms from the first week of varsity. Now here was a guy my age, quite attractive, practically demanding that I have sex with him. I couldn’t believe my luck. I followed him to the nearest bedroom, where we groped our way through the dark and didn’t bother to turn the light on.
I felt clumsy because I had no idea what I was doing. I mean, I had kissed a boy but that hadn’t gone very far nor had it ended well. In the darkness of that room alone with a strange boy who was quite attractive, I was terrified of disappointing.
Danny, on the other hand, was neither clumsy nor lacking in confidence or experience, clearly. He pushed himself against me and started unbuckling my belt with fascinating skill and speed. When I felt his mouth around the tip of my penis I shut my eyes and inhaled sharply, grabbing his limp straight hair with both hands. I stepped back and found myself flopping onto the bed, but skilled Danny’s lips never left my cock.
When he did speak he said, “Put your finger in here!” and I was so aroused that I instantly obliged. But the whole thing was quick, and once we were done, Danny and I had nothing to say to each other and left the room in awkward silence to join the group outside.
I felt like a new man. I smoked two or three spliffs that night, skipping the drinks, watching as people went into the rooms in pairs, or groups of three, and sometimes four. It finally felt like I had joined the party.
Still, when I was alone I was filled with intolerable amounts of shame. I would look back one minute and think of how aroused I had been and then the next minute I’d remember how Danny had looked at me like I was stepping out of an old painting in a museum: I
was something to grab and taste, not someone he was really curious about. Had he been straight and in one of my classes, speaking to me about “your people” and “your dialect,” I would never have given him the time of day. Loneliness and boyish sexual frustration meant that I overlooked a few things. But after that experience there was confirmation of my feeling that I could get pleasure from sex with men. I had enjoyed myself far more than I had thought I would. I had loved it. I had been very open to every bit of it, however brief the encounter had been, and I looked forward to doing more.
I hardly ever went home. Even for the longer winter break, I was in and out of my parents’ home in a few days, unable to stand the feeling of being alone around other, familiar people. Cape Town had been such an intoxicating escape that back in Kasi I felt like a caged animal. I might have stayed longer if I hadn’t seen Sediba briefly one Sunday afternoon at Trunka’s house.
I think he must have already been there when I walked in, but I hadn’t noticed. The place was always full of people chatting, laughing, dancing, having drinks. Trunka, Lelo, and Base were sitting on turned-over bottle crates drinking when I joined them. It was easy, getting back into our old ways, talking about the same things, and I, as always, avoiding the stuff I needed to avoid. So while I was a little bit taken aback when they introduced me to a girl whose name I can’t even remember now, I went with the flow. I must already have been drunk, and I was standing with my back against the wall with her hand on my arm, the two of us laughing about I-don’t-know-what. Suddenly up walked Sediba in his usual easy style, wearing white t-shirt and dark jeans. His face expressed no surprise, it was as though he were seeing me for the first time. I, on the other hand, was startled.
He said, “Heita,” voice breezy, the smile on his lips not quite reaching his eyes. With such a casual Kasi greeting, he was putting distance between us. “Ey . . . ,” I managed, rubbing my eyes as if to help my mind focus. The girl didn’t go away even as I willed her to. She seemed instead to squeeze herself even closer. Sediba kept walking, going towards the gate. I excused myself and followed, catching up with him just as he was lifting the latch.
“Ey . . . I haven’t seen you in a long time. Stay and chat.” I knew even in that moment that I sounded like an arse, trying not to slur my words.
“How long have you been back?” he asked, no smile this time.
“I don’t know, a few days.”
He looked me in the eye for a moment. It was hurt I could see in his face, not judgement for the girl, which I might have preferred. He said, “I have to go,” but didn’t move or take his eyes off me. I couldn’t think of anything more to say but I felt sober now, my eyes now starting to focus. I cleared the lump in my throat. I could barely stand to see him, to be standing right in front of him and feeling so far.
“Come over later . . . we could . . . ” I hesitated.
“You’re busy, Kabelo.” He was looking at the girl, who was watching us curiously from where I’d left her. “Don’t be rude.”
He marched off and left me holding on to the fence. Behind me I could feel the girl still waiting; I could feel everything still waiting. My parents, my home, my friends, my school work, the expectation of coming back to work at my father’s surgery. Everything waited for me to face it and all I wanted was to go wherever Sediba was going.
The girl delicately brushed something off her pants and then waved. I felt her eyes wide with expectation when she looked at me, her smile eager, inviting, sweet.
I have rarely felt as lonely and ashamed as I did at that moment.
I was drinking and smoking too much, I knew that. But in Cape Town there was no one and nothing to tell me this, or that my excesses wouldn’t change my parents’ expectations or drive away my guilt about their expectations. They wouldn’t fix me. Couldn’t make me love a girl or be the kind of man Lelo was. In Cape Town I could pretend they would but in Kasi there was a lot that would admonish me: like when I stumbled after too many beers and Trunka said, “Yoh, did you pump up that whole crate?” Or Lelo saying, “I don’t remember you liking zol, this must be Cape Town stuff.”
Cape Town stuff. He had no idea.
And Sediba. Sediba’s eyes going from me to the bottle in my hand and back up to my bloodshot eyes. Sediba talking to me but looking at the girl whose name I was not respectful enough to remember. Sediba, walking away instead of wanting to be alone with me.
I couldn’t stay there. I was back in Cape Town forty-eight hours earlier than I was meant to be. But soon Cape Town also had to come to an end, because when things are out of control, something has to give.
The evening that was the last I saw of Rodney, we were alone at his house sitting in the sun on the pool deck, smoking zol. I had spent part of the day alone with my books, catching up, trying to make a dent in my studying before I made my way to Rodney’s. I’d been on thin ice at that point, a little bit afraid that I might not pass my exams, having been too much into parties and let a few crucial things go.
I found Rodney already high, jittery, eyes red and puffy. He was talking about a guy called Akhu who was from a political family in a neighbouring country who was sort of hiding out at UCT, coming to our gay parties at night and pretending to have a girlfriend in the daytime.
“Akhu could never hide that he’s such a fag. Imagine him going back there and dealing with his father.”
“Why do you use that word?”
I turned to lie on my back.
“What? Fag?”
“I always found it . . . unsettling. Jarring. I mean, doesn’t it scare you when people use it?”
Rodney shrugged. “I’ve been called that, punched by some fuckers on Front Street. I use it to defend myself, if that makes sense. I use it the way black Americans use n___. I take it back. Reclaim it.”
“I think that’s a load of shit.”
He chuckled. “You’re probably right. But I like the sound of it. I can’t help it. I mean if not that, then what are we? Homos? Do you like that better?”
“How about gay?”
“All right then,” he said like he couldn’t care less. “We’ll use that.”
We went quiet, listening to the happy sounds of sunbathers and swimmers frolicking on the beach, somewhere on the other side of the high white wall.
“He’s going back, you know.”
“What?” The ganja hit. I’d half forgotten what we were going on about.
“Akhu. He’s going back. To enjoy the path his father has laid out for him. Nepotism. That’s how it goes. He’s going to be groomed to be a minister or something. I think eventually they’re hoping he’ll take over.”
“Are you joking? He’s . . . isn’t he our age?”
“That’s the plan, from what I hear. Hey, why don’t you and he ever, you know? I mean, you’re both so attractive.”
I vehemently shook my head.
Without asking for an explanation, he said, “And you know what else? Akhu isn’t his name. Not the name everyone knows him by anyway. See? You go away to South Africa and its all debauchery, you get it out of your system, and then you go back home and be a nice, respectable, straight African boy.”
I winced at the thought. My father and all of my community expected the same from me. I liked the fact that medicine took seven long years—I didn’t have to think too much about what I would do next, but I knew what was required of me: to get a degree and then come home and follow in my father’s footsteps.
Township doctor. White coat and old neighbours as patients. My mother and everyone finding me a wife. The thought made me ill every time it came up.
“Ha! Someday we’ll watch him on TV,” Rodney was carrying on. “He’ll denounce homos as filthy and unnatural and then he’ll come down to South Africa on an unofficial visit and spend some gay old time with a nice South African boy.”
He was now standing up, closely observing the sunrays landing on the turquoise pool. I got up and pulled him back, because he was too high and standing too close. He came back to sit down and continued talking.
Through my haze I noticed him blink as if fighting back tears.
“Yesterday I told my mother. I just came right out with it.”
“With what?”
“I said, ‘Mum, I’m gay.’ ”
“No! Why? What . . . what did she say? That does not sound like a good idea man.” I was standing up now, towering over him, my heart racing like he’d just told me he tried to kill himself. Which I thought was the same thing.
“Wow. If you had been here you could have stopped me from doing it. Too bad, then.” A lone tear ran down his cheek.
I knelt beside him and put my hand on his arm, more to settle myself than to calm him.
“Rod, what happened?”
“She stood up and stepped away from me. It was . . . so . . . I thought I had imagined saying it. It was like I hadn’t said anything. She just stood there and said: ‘Rodney dear, we really should start supper.’”
I had never met his mother, but Rodney was now speaking with a haughty British accent that I knew he used all the time for his mother.
“I said, ‘Mum! I’m fucking gay! Did you hear me? I said I’m gay! A homosexual, if you like. I like sleeping with men!’”
“You didn’t!”
“I did! I screamed it in her face: ‘I like sleeping with men!’”
I laughed at the absurdity of saying something like that to one’s parent. Was Rodney going mad? Were the drugs taking over his brain? If you had asked me at the time I would probably have told you I planned to die before ever telling my parents I was gay.
“What happened then?”
“She picked up her handbag and said, ‘I’m going to the shop, Rodney dear, we need olive oil.’” He stood up and demonstrated, then let out a strange, bitter laugh. So unlike the carefree, delightful sound I often enjoyed hearing from him.
Such a Lonely, Lovely Road Page 6
