Finding Father I: Scottburgh

 

Seaside towns hold secrets. Something in my father changes as we approach Scottburgh. He speaks softly, with less authority than in our home. He is moving into his past. To his boyhood. He is searching his memories, and, it seems, leaving us behind. He is looking for his own father.

The gates to the Scottburgh cemetery have rusted over. There is no area to park our car, so we leave it straddling the roadside and grass verge. People visit their dead on foot here.

Dad unlatches the gate and ushers us in. We are afraid to break the silence, not wanting to offend those resting. We are the only visitors.

His father rests in a lot under the family name with his wife, as requested. They lie proud but not showy. No porcelain statues, no angels or banners to intimidate. Simply their names. Tasteful. Modest enough to know that memory is marked by the mind and experience.

We walk to his childhood home. It has been destroyed and rebuilt and he describes the original structure for us. Over here is where he and his cousin were put to work as punishment for stealing mangoes from the neighbour’s tree. Here where he was made to smoke an entire box of cigarettes, and then promise he’d never do it again. Here, where he broke his arm by falling over the verandah railing, practising his Elvis impersonation for the town’s Christmas pageant.

Here his mother sat by the record player and cried, listening to Billie Holiday on the day of my grandfather’s death, until they made the music stop and put her to sleep.

Here he hid bottles from her as she drank more and more in the weeks that followed the death.

It is time to leave. My sister complains about the heat. Mom wants to get home to the dogs. My father stands in his seaside town. His eyes narrow. He turns away and takes a breath. Then he returns his focus to us, with a smile. I smile back and wish I did not understand him as much as I do right now.

Scene Around

 

Before judgement and hoop earrings and clever wordplay. Acid jazz, before misunderstood intention and irony. Caffeine-free diet. Sex. Growing old with cats and willing to betray oneself. Before ego. Stomach ulcers, shortcomings, experimentation, memory, liquor cabinets and seen around on Saturday nights.

 

When she asks him questions in public, he smiles through gritted teeth and says,

“I’ll tell you later.”

But he never does.

She leans her weight against the bar, the flesh of her underarm clinging to a spot where someone has spilt Peach Schnapps. Her earrings dangle at her jawline and stretch her earlobes, which will have puffed in the morning and filled with the gunk of infection.

She is air kissed.

 When he talks to her she listens. And when she replies, he looks at a spot just above her shoulder and slightly to the left. She tells him he is not listening, and he repeats her words back to prove he has. Then he waves at a woman in the doorway.

He excuses himself by patting her back as if they are buddies.

A stranger discusses his irritable bowel, and she lifts one foot out of her stiletto, relief for the blister that has rubbed off against the leather strap and wept along her arch.

She catches her reflection in the window. Foundation has caked in the creases around her eyes. When people greet her she wonders if they notice.

 

Before a faster internet connection, longer length tops and a chemical peel. Before a touch of lipstick, jealousy, you’re a big girl now. Before early detection. Muggings and budgets and what do we do about 2010. Before flirtation. Before cigarette breath, new linen, anger.

 

She steps out on to the street, the winds of an electrical storm whipping along the esplanade, so that couples hurry indoors, men stretching to cover their partners’ heads with newspapers, ladies running with knock-kneed clinging to their wayward skirts.

 

A cab is parked at the curb. She climbs in and a smiling man named Roy introduces himself and asks where she would like to go. She directs him toward her home while they share a cigarette. She tells him that one of her favourite things is to hold people’s faces when she kisses them, and that she really likes it when things are a little damaged, or scarred, or maybe a little ugly.

Roy thinks she watches too many films, but he likes her anyway.

 

Roy waits for her to be locked inside before he drives away.

She stares at herself in all the mirrors and tries to find how each one reflects her differently.

She rubs at her makeup and splashes her face.

She pretends not to notice when he comes in at 4am. He kisses her forehead and a few minutes later, she hears him whispering on the phone upstairs.

 

Before running out of time, knowing the right people, vitamin supplements. Before the search, breaking news and statistic. A hot oil treatment, safety, cliché, low GI diet.

Before becoming

before

Before being seen around.

My Darling

Editorial: Summer Lovin’

Editorial: Summer Lovin’

 

So, the month of love and Hallmark cards is done, and I can creep out of my single girl’s shameful closet.

 

I got dumped for Valentine’s day.

 

Don’t feel sorry for me, I had bigger fish to fry; a little dumping was nothing. And he wore terrible shoes anyway, and was far too in need of a mother for my liking. He liked those sandals with the woven straps that only Germans should be permitted to wear. And even then, they shouldn’t be allowed, but they’re German and that means they’re scary and I’m certainly not going to stop them. Apologies to Germans everywhere, but you terrify me.

 

Valentine’s came and went and roses were given and dinners were had and single people ranted about capitalism and the meaningless of it all. I couldn’t leave the house that evening. Flatmate and I wanted to go for dinner - single girls on the town, laughing, drinking wine and watching the couples of the city make eyes at each other and sweat through their romance.

 

But we couldn’t.

We’re tired of looking like a couple.

This isn’t paranoia.

 

A few months ago, while out for breakfast, we requested two glasses of water and when brought a single glass with two straws carefully placed, we realized that we’d been mistaken for lovers. Like two characters at Pop Tate’s in some liberal version of an Archie comic.

 

“Um, it’s just, uh, I thought you were, you know…” stuttered Waitress as I questioned the glass situation. I have never actually seen a person flee before. She fled.

 

It’s happened many times. We ain’t batting for the other team, folks, we’re just finding it hard to hook up.

 

There’s a new trend-word out at the moment. Bromance, referring to the unusually close bond between two heterosexual males.Valentine’s day, across town, two of my most caveman male friends meet for dinner. One is celebrating his birthday, the other arrives with a gift. The two spend dinner making smalltalk and worrying about whether their body language suggests they are engaged in the Valentine’s woo.

 

Oh it’s all so complicated.

I scouted the couples I know. All stayed in on Valentine’s.

Only one pair went out. To Spur at Ushaka. I love Spur, but it’s not exactly the Official Restaurant Of The Subtle Seduction. And as for Ushaka, well, I’m told there was a man wandering through the grounds serenading folks with Dave Brubeck’s ‘Take Five’ on his saxophone. Beautiful. Still, if I’m gonna get Wet and Wild and loony by Cupid’s bow, I’d rather it not be on the supertubes, you know?

 

I had a boyfriend once (it ended badly, surprise) who was perfectly adequate in the romance department. He took his cue and dished up the flattery and smoochy bric-a-brac when necessary. But on Valentine’s day we were not allowed to communicate. Not even a flirty SMS. Nothing. He said it was too much pressure. Something about commitment, something, something, fear, something, change of subject, something, the Blue Bulls are bastards, pass me the remote, something, something.

 

Truth is, I don’t want to hate this stuff. I don’t want to use Bridget Jones logic and curse the smug marrieds and phone up my single friends and drink until I’m slurring about my freedom.

 

In Class One, I put a Valentine’s card in my crush’s chairbag. He was good at colouring inside the lines and I thought he was dreamy. He cried and told on and the teacher made me eat my lunch alone at break. Things haven’t really changed that much.

 

Still, we won’t complain.

Happy month of March everyone. Ding dong cupid is dead.

Judd Campbell Interview: from afrodisiacmag days

A Stand-Up City

Hanging With Judd At The Corner Café

 

Durban is not the city to visit if you want to get lost. If you’ve fled to confront your skeletons in Asian closets, Durbanites will know. If you’ve returned with your European backpack, we will know.

We will know and we will mock your temporary and over-articulate exotic accent. No clan makes fun like a Durban clan can. Hell, we say ‘fush’ and operate on a lower internal currency to our sister cities. Durban knows comedy.

 

We’re a city staging stand-up. And if Durbs is comedy central, there’s a man hanging around the sidewalks of Glenwood, right in the belly of the new suburban cool, who is playing host.

 

Even if you don’t know Judd Campbell, you know Judd Campbell. His concept precedes him.

 

I haven’t been able to open our lunchtime meeting before Judd is discussing his love for Pina Coladas, horse-riding (bareback, please), walks in the rain and Puerto Rican girls. At times, I get the feeling that I am in the middle of Mardi Gras, or a roller rink, or that time with my BMX when I was 8.

 

Judd is like that. Disarming. So concurrently genteel and sarcastic that I can’t tell the difference between mockery and sincerity and I don’t really give a continental anyway.

 

I’m suspicious of the trendy hotspots. I find myself treading the dissolve into formula-fetish and fixation on the creases in my lap as I perch on pokey cocktail stools and long for the couch and my flannel jimjams. But Judd’s concept for The Corner Café is a smart one. His is a guerilla cool, unassuming and uncomplicated and damn astute. He tricks us into accountability.

 

Based on the idea of eco-health, Judd tells me about the time he’s spent with chip-fryers and apathy, and how he wants to build a consciousness around what his restaurant  ‘puts into people’.

“It’s our penance”, he says, explaining The Corner Café’s system of environmentalism, avoiding unnecessary waste, microwaves and, basically, doing the cool things for our bodies and surroundings that we’d all love to do but we couldn’t be arsed.

Now it doesn’t seem that much of a mission.The Corner Café is making it cool to go green.

“But I’m no hippie”, Judd insists, with eyebrow raised.

 

My fruit salad smoothie arrives and he leans over to inspect it.

We are sweating out our personalities. It’s one of those Durban days where you hate the city and feel like it’s all you’ll ever need. Where its inhabitants slip into a makeshift island style and our attempts to keep cool turn us into the best kind of unconscious-cool and I decide that we occupy the greatest space on earth.

You’ve gotta meet this guy, man.

“I never wanted to be a manager, or an owner… I wanted to be a waiter until I turned 45.”

Twelve years in the industry, and Judd’s still playing.

The system is simple, Judd on the floor, rocking it; the food is that flawless meeting of fusion-sophistication and a chilled Durban chow you’re craving around lunch. And it’s good for you.

 

Born on the Bluff, raised on the Berea and fiercely loyal to Durban, Judd plays tennis, watches too many films and laughs at stupidity, Monty Python and the folks in our city. He is fragments of the best scenes in your favourite movies, or those moments you share with friends but expect no outsider to understand. Somewhere along the line he leaps up to show me his new step-counter and recalls how he walked 15,000 steps on Saturday. That’s 12 k’s. 203 calories. All in the restaurant. Judd doesn’t stop. When The Corner Café is closed, he works voluntary shifts for friends. This guy is the ‘Where’s Wally’ of the restaurant world. 

“You have 45 minutes to get to know someone. It’s the best job in the world.”

And with that, Judd’s back to work, meeting and greeting and chocolate chip cookie-ing. He closes our meeting so perfectly, he’s even playing host to my writing.

 

Do your fine selves a favour and take a time out in the stand-up city. Chill on the corner like it used to be done, and when your mouth isn’t full, kids, ask Judd about the water. It’s the best part of his set. And he’s there all week.

 

The Corner Café, 031 2010219

Open Monday to Friday 7am – 5pm, Saturday 7am – 4pm  

    

Pride March: originally written for the documentary “Do Girls Want It?”

Pride March

 

I’m paying homage to a concept that doesn’t exist.

I was born into her

She was born in me

And now this virgin me is pure memory,

I was space to rent,

I was temporary,

I was housing untouched naivety

Coz I never really owned my virginity

-she owned me

And now I’m paying homage to a concept that doesn’t exist.

 

I was born into her

My birth made manifest

A thousand-fold obligation

And placed me on the pedestal of purity

which declares me virgin before I am me.

See, I never really owned my virginity, she owned me

And now I’m paying homage to a concept that doesn’t exist.

 

But it never was lost,

My virgin memory –

In loss lies

Too many lies of lying in wait for return.

In some moments it was surrender

In others it was theft

And now I’m paying homage to a concept that doesn’t exist.

 

So see the virgin me

The me outside memory

The me more real than my purity,

A lie which lies me in pools of guilt beside gilt virgins

paying homage to a concept that doesn’t exist so I

fear what’s in me

believe I am dirty

because I never really owned my virginity, she owned me,

We’re paying homage to a concept that doesn’t exist.

 

See my virgin soul

Take a look at me,

The me that extends beyond my body.

Hear my untouched being

Screaming I am free

I am me beyond my virginity

This is my pride march

Don’t fall in line –

You’ll need to sing your own song, freedom keeps its own time.

I’m singin a pride song here and it goes

 

I was born a virgin soul

I live a virgin being

I will die with virginity

Long after any act of sexuality

I don’t want the title

The name isn’t me,

I am me before I am my purity –

I never really owned my virginity, she owned me,

We’re paying homage to a concept that doesn’t exist.

 

I’m singin a pride song here and it goes

I was born a virgin soul

I live a virgin being

I will die with virginity

Long after any act of sexuality

I don’t want the title

The name isn’t me,

I am me before I am my purity –

 

I never really owned my virginity, she owned me,

We’re paying homage to a concept that doesn’t exist.

Stumbled upon

From the Book Bag

Visited the library today.

 

I have a book bag now, exclusive book bag for library books. I like the way it slings over my shoulder and sits perfectly in the small of my back. My small of the back bag book bag.  The library. I’d forgotten; haven’t been a member since, when- my late school years. No, when university began and I moved to the city and started calling everything from home provincial, that’s when I stopped. My adulthood appears to be a considered undoing of everything I have been up until this point. I’ll say the same thing of myself in twenty years, or one, who knows. I find myself in the phase right now where I talk about all the phases I’ve been through.

 

To hold a book in my hands. To read, not to scan. To be here, here in the living of this moment, this one moment outside of windows which can’t be swapped and pop-ups which can’t be blocked. To smell paper, old sheets – which has become a contrived sensory sneak now, made mundane by all the chick lit which has come before, where gentle young women turn pages and take in the tea stain and old print of their books with the cracked spines and dog-eared sense of serendipitous things. My awareness has become such a scathing thing.

 

I treat my books like lovers. Obvious. The only romance afforded gravity must be laced with something sort of dangerous, violent barter; high stakes birth significance. Fiercely loyal to a group of writers and unwilling to try anything else. More interested in the later letters of the alphabet, rather than the early ones, with the supreme exception of Julian Barnes who writes melancholy so well, laced with a consistent awareness of self and hatred of his homeland, his Britain, which I similarly despise. I don’t know what the metaphorical sidetrack is there.  

 

In the bath this morning, I couldn’t reach a part of my back, and I thought of how many films use the washing of backs between lovers as something intense and representative of everything that lives between them. The semiotics of hygiene, I guess. And I imagined a woman who would spend her nights bathing, never able to reach that spot reserved for an imagined lover, and otherwise left untouched as she spends her days alone. Each evening, back to the bath, spot on the back unwashed. I imagined how she would die and be found, and examined, undertaker or surgeon taking note of a little mouldy spot just under her shoulder wing.

 

Then I thought of how kak and melodramatic I tend to become. I am often nostalgic for things not yet found.

 

Never felt so liberated as when I was openly termed ‘depressive’. Delicious, the relief which accompanied doctor’s declaration. I was, “grieving for my existence”, doctor said, which sounded to me suspicious plagiarism of Chekhov’s Masha who lived in mourning for her life and so I begrudged his qualifications as I did his Picasso wall prints; Westville hospital, see for yourself) – I’m not sure which words to choose, but they’re somewhere around the dread of an impending deadline which evaporates when an assignment is suddenly cancelled and you’re – hurrah – on holiday. Life was the assignment and I’d been given the permission to forfeit. It seemed that functionality was effort; I had become lazy and I knew, knew it was that simple and also that oafish; my arts education already teaching me that dark was not necessarily deep and anyway, all things were ultimately redundant. I was, for a short while, put on a type of in-house suicide watch, which comprised my father being too patient and my mother too afraid. The night I swallowed thirty five anti-depressants and half-heartedly nicked my arms, I’d gone dancing and, at the point when my drunken friends whooped along to the climax of some irony-laden indie pop track, I felt my equally drunken self identifying an inherent pointlessness to things, and in that instant, somehow, I equated their dancey, playful writhing as a symbol for everything great and I could find no reason. At the same time, my adult self, from somewhere in my distant future, was living with me and looking back, so that I was at once my present and my hindsight and she could not comfort me and I offered little back. We could not tell each other apart, my immediate and future selves, and we grew sad for each other then.

 

Sometimes, almost always when I brush my teeth, when I give in to my narcissistic tendencies and indulge a mirror-gaze, I feel my soul looking out from behind my eyeballs, clawing for some recognition with the reflection it sees. Some indication that they are the parts of the same whole, that abstract self and solid reflection. I cannot fathom it. They are like strangers wanting to escape an uncomfortable supper.

 

This is not therapy. Only, why I can’t write.

 

After that, the story goes as it goes. We heal and grow. Grow less panicked, less impressed by the hysteria of a painful life and begin to delight in countless strings of little things. Magical, ordinary things. Aircon units humming just so, chance meetings, projected profundities in our tea and biscuits. If we can only outlive our masochism, we grow up.

 

Amongst my regrets in life is, I’d guess, my crossing over that Freudian line when a baby discovers itself as ‘I’ and walks into his or her own ego. Accepts possession. If I could write with absolute omission of me, my ‘I’, there may be something.

 

Fitter. Happier. More productive.

Animation from 'Tree Boy' by Tessa Comrie

I don’t think you should tell her she doesn’t have any blood.

As the people who adore you stop adoring you; as they die; as they move on; as you shed them; as you shed your beauty; your youth; as the world forgets you; as you recognize your transience; as you begin to lose your characteristics one by one; as you learn there is no-one watching you, and there never was, you think only about driving – not coming from any place; not arriving any place. Just driving, counting off time. Now you are here, at 7:43. Now you are here, at 7:44. Now you are…

(Synecdoche, New York)