with me. Maureen. The terrible innocence of it all. And how the next day her parents had arrived at our house with their church faces, and how Pa had belted me that evening so that for three nights I had to sleep on my fucking stomach. In a way everything that happened afterwards was somehow second-hand.
Hairy Shoulder
And later my thoughts inevitably turned to Sylvia, to the fuck-up we’d made of our life together. Where had it all begun? Surely we’d had good times too, once. Perhaps she got pregnant too soon. Six months after the wedding, just weeks before we were to leave for Europe to paint the place red. I still remember the farewell party. Jesus, the look in her eyes when she danced with Twinkletoes van Tonder. But I wasn’t going to show the chip on the hairy shoulder. God forbid. Pity I had a bit too much to drink though, she too, for different reasons, and when we tumbled into bed at home at three or four in the morning, we fucked like dogs and slept like hogs, and only in the morning realised we hadn’t used anything. The atmosphere was as acid as the vinegar she recklessly used to douche herself, blistering the inside of her cunt, and too late anyway, the harm had been done. Three weeks later the testing strip proved what it wasn’t supposed to.
All plans suspended, she cancelled her scholarship, I dropped my registration for Ph. D. and took the fucking job at the newspaper, we needed the measly few rand a month extra. After Louise’s birth sex was no longer an escape, except when we were either too mad or too drunk to care. How various the ways of saying, ‘I love you’, once you’ve mastered the fucking grammar of perversity. Like any kind of torture it’s just a matter of refinement. Marius was the final, unforeseen, product of our years of open warfare. Sylvia moved into the spare bedroom and began to spend her days, with Louise in tow, in malls and things, running up bills for clothes and shit I couldn’t pay for. I turned to whores and the odd little sordid fling with secretaries and cub reporters until I got slapped with a warning for sexual harassment. And Sylvia laid on her own affairs, more or less discreet to start with, except she made damn sure I’d find out when it would hurt most exquisitely. It was worse when she bedded my chief editor. The cherry, no pun intended, was bringing one of my juniors home. God, I can still hear the caterwauling of her orgasm, real or faked (did I ever learn the difference, did she?). After that I couldn’t care a fuck any more. Syphilis of the soul, right?
What’s left is just this stupid sense of betrayal all the way. But who by whom? Each time you kiss a little bit of yourself goodbye.
All I know is that I’ve never had a way with women. Who was to blame? Okay, I’m not trying to duck anything. But I mean, who ever prepared me for it? Ma with the ciggie stuck to her lower lip, the curlers in her hair, the candlewick gown? And who never intervened when Pa came home pissed beyond description on Saturday nights to pluck Dolf and me from our bed for a thrashing? Don’t get me wrong. I’m not complaining. An Esau with hair on his body is supposed to take it on the chin. But I just don’t know. Woman, woman: a fucking wilderness for me.
Cakes and Tarts
I N A WAY this was just the beginning of the events of that weird Sunday. Because after the children it was the women’s turn. Tant Poppie was barely home again when they started coming: the women with their cakes and tarts and daughters. The righteous sisters of the congregation, five or six of them in a row (and several more during the following days), each with a special gift from the oven, or a jar of jam, a basket of quinces or pomegranates, a roll of mebos or a bowl of honey, to welcome the stranger from outer space in their midst. And to present their nubile daughters, right, bedecked in fucking frills and embroidery, with ribbons in their hair.
The first mother asked without any beating
Hairy Shoulder
And later my thoughts inevitably turned to Sylvia, to the fuck-up we’d made of our life together. Where had it all begun? Surely we’d had good times too, once. Perhaps she got pregnant too soon. Six months after the wedding, just weeks before we were to leave for Europe to paint the place red. I still remember the farewell party. Jesus, the look in her eyes when she danced with Twinkletoes van Tonder. But I wasn’t going to show the chip on the hairy shoulder. God forbid. Pity I had a bit too much to drink though, she too, for different reasons, and when we tumbled into bed at home at three or four in the morning, we fucked like dogs and slept like hogs, and only in the morning realised we hadn’t used anything. The atmosphere was as acid as the vinegar she recklessly used to douche herself, blistering the inside of her cunt, and too late anyway, the harm had been done. Three weeks later the testing strip proved what it wasn’t supposed to.
All plans suspended, she cancelled her scholarship, I dropped my registration for Ph. D. and took the fucking job at the newspaper, we needed the measly few rand a month extra. After Louise’s birth sex was no longer an escape, except when we were either too mad or too drunk to care. How various the ways of saying, ‘I love you’, once you’ve mastered the fucking grammar of perversity. Like any kind of torture it’s just a matter of refinement. Marius was the final, unforeseen, product of our years of open warfare. Sylvia moved into the spare bedroom and began to spend her days, with Louise in tow, in malls and things, running up bills for clothes and shit I couldn’t pay for. I turned to whores and the odd little sordid fling with secretaries and cub reporters until I got slapped with a warning for sexual harassment. And Sylvia laid on her own affairs, more or less discreet to start with, except she made damn sure I’d find out when it would hurt most exquisitely. It was worse when she bedded my chief editor. The cherry, no pun intended, was bringing one of my juniors home. God, I can still hear the caterwauling of her orgasm, real or faked (did I ever learn the difference, did she?). After that I couldn’t care a fuck any more. Syphilis of the soul, right?
What’s left is just this stupid sense of betrayal all the way. But who by whom? Each time you kiss a little bit of yourself goodbye.
All I know is that I’ve never had a way with women. Who was to blame? Okay, I’m not trying to duck anything. But I mean, who ever prepared me for it? Ma with the ciggie stuck to her lower lip, the curlers in her hair, the candlewick gown? And who never intervened when Pa came home pissed beyond description on Saturday nights to pluck Dolf and me from our bed for a thrashing? Don’t get me wrong. I’m not complaining. An Esau with hair on his body is supposed to take it on the chin. But I just don’t know. Woman, woman: a fucking wilderness for me.
Cakes and Tarts
I N A WAY this was just the beginning of the events of that weird Sunday. Because after the children it was the women’s turn. Tant Poppie was barely home again when they started coming: the women with their cakes and tarts and daughters. The righteous sisters of the congregation, five or six of them in a row (and several more during the following days), each with a special gift from the oven, or a jar of jam, a basket of quinces or pomegranates, a roll of mebos or a bowl of honey, to welcome the stranger from outer space in their midst. And to present their nubile daughters, right, bedecked in fucking frills and embroidery, with ribbons in their hair.
The first mother asked without any beating
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