“You like that, don’t you?” I say while I rub it.
I know how to please a man. I know these bastards. I’ve done this a thousand times. They all like it if you play with the part between their balls and asshole. And you must not pull too hard on the dick. It’s better if you play with the dick as close as possible to the tummy, otherwise they say it’s sore or it starts flopping. And the older they get the more it doesn’t stand up against their tummy. One guy’s dick was still down but it was hard. And he wasn’t that old. I think he had a problem with his piel. Poor bastard. Imagine having a broken piel.
Another thing is I never ask them how that feels. They hate that question. I think it reminds them of their boyfriends or their wives or whoever it is they are cheating on. The other thing is if you ask you get strange requests. I don’t want to think about some of the things I’ve had to do to these bastards. No thank you.
“Let’s go to the bathroom.”
“Wait. I have a problem with my leg. I can’t shower.”
“Then you’ll bath and I’ll shower.”
We go to the bathroom. It has white tiles on the floor that show off your reflection. And there is a large mirror on one wall. You can see your whole body when you get naked. And there are two toilet seats but one of them has little taps. It looks broken.
“I’ve never seen myself like this before,” I say looking at the mirror.
“You mean naked?”
“No. I’ve seen myself naked before, just not on a mirror this big and with all this light.”
“Oh,” he says and runs a bath for me. I feel stupid for saying that.
“Are you hungry?”
“Not really,” I lie and look at the white bath.
The taps are made of gold. Can you believe it, Blue? Gold. The fucking taps are made of gold. This guy must be loaded with baksheesh.
“Not too much,” I say.
He closes the taps and gives me some soap and a towel. I get into the bath and hang my knee over the edge.
“Clever boy,” he says and gets into the shower.
Fuck, I’m glad I washed at Gerald’s. Imagine if he had to see my brown dirt.
We wash quickly and I clean out the bath with a sponge afterwards.
He gets out of the shower, his banana dick bouncing everywhere. He reaches out and strokes my face. I shake his dick and say “Pleased to meet you” like white people do. He laughs a little and takes my hand.
We go to his room. There is a large window and a bed far away from the window. Sit here, he says, and goes to the window to close the curtains. I bounce a little on his big bed. It’s nice and hard.
“Is this your room?”
“No, it’s the guest room,” he says and puts on the light.
He spreads me on the wide bed and starts sucking my dick. That’s never happened before. I start giggling.
“Sorry, I’ve never had this,” I say.
He ignores me and carries on. After a while the pleasure turns into sadness.
“I’ll do it to you,” I say.
He turns over and lies on his back. I take his banana dick in my hand and start stroking it. He lets out a long sigh. I play with his balls and the part underneath his balls. When I put my mouth on his head he moans a little and closes his eyes. I don’t think about anything else. I just suck and play with my tongue on his banana dick. He starts breathing funny like he’s going to pass out. Then he grabs my wrist and a fountain of sperm pours out of his banana dick and lands on his chest. It’s over when that happens.
They all lie back and don’t want to be touched. All that I can hope for now is that he will keep his other end of the bargain.
“Just give me some time,” he says.
“You mean you still want to go?”
“Who’s paying here?”
“I was only asking,” I say and play with his balls.
After a while his banana dick rises again.
“Lie back,” he says, “I want to come all over you. Do you mind?”
“No. Just don’t squirt on my face.”
He starts playing with himself while he stands over me. They all seem to enjoy this. I guess it feels like pissing to them.
After a while, a long while actually, he comes all over my chest. “Thank you,” he says, “I’ve been dying to do that all day.”
* * *
“It’s a little hot, isn’t it?” he says and puts on the air-conditioning.
I go to the toilet to get my clothes.
“Don’t bother with them,” he says.
We walk around the house naked. I have the feeling people are watching me, or rather that a camera is following me. He walks around in his slippers. I follow him to the kitchen. He opens a large silver door and a cold breeze comes out. The shelves are stacked with food.
“What do you fancy? We can either have turkey on our sandwich or cheese.”
“Turkey and cheese,” I say.
He takes them both out and a cabbage. I watch him prepare the food. He’s good with his hands.
“So what do you do?” I ask him. “If you don’t mind.”
“I’m an investment banker.”
“But what do you do?”
“I work with lots of money.”
“It must be a hard job,” I say.
“It is.”
“So you work here in Cape Town?”
“That’s right.”
Investment banker. He’s probably the bastard who took my money, I say, thinking of Joyce.
“So is it hard for anyone to open a banking spot at your place?”
“You mean opening an account. I’m afraid I don’t do that sort of work.”
“Oh. So you’re like the boss.”
“Something like that. I have a lot of people working for me. But I know what you’re talking about.”
We sit at the table. He pours me some orange juice in a tall glass.
“This is strange,” I tell him.
“What?”
“Walking and eating naked like this.”
“You don’t like it?”
“No, it just feels strange. But a good strange.”
He chews with his mouth closed. As always I eat quickly.
“Had enough?” he asks, after I have finished four slices of bread.
“Yes.”
I wanted to say thank you but it just wouldn’t come out. We go to the other room with the big television. He puts on some music.
“You know what this is?”
“No, but I’ve heard it before.”
“Classical music. Carl Orff, Carmina Burana. He’s like your . . . rap artists or whatever you listen to.”
He sits on a chair for one and grabs some cigarettes from the table beside him.
“Can I have one?” I ask as he lights one.
He takes one out but he doesn’t pull it all the way out of the pack. He offers me the one pointing at me. His manners are maddening. I can see him. He thinks about everything all the time.
We smoke in silence and listen to the music. The songs are long. But I like the music. It does something to your insides. It lets you relax.
“But this music is violent,” I say after a while.
“It is, isn’t it? Carmina Burana is not for the faint-hearted. Listen to this part.”
The strings reach fever pitch and people sing around beating drums.
“What is that instrument?”
“Violin.”
“You like music, don’t you?”
“Ssssh,” he says, “listen.”
I listen with him for about thirty minutes and fall asleep. He wakes me. He’s already dressed.
“I just need to park the car in the garage downstairs. Don’t get up to any mischief. Oh, and you can’t leave the building without me. So just behave. I’ll be back in a while,” he says and leaves.
As soon as he leaves I put on the TV again. This time the TV shows the room we were doing it in. I go in there and look for the cameras but I c
an’t find them. It starts feeling creepy walking around the house naked. Is this guy a pervert or something? I say as I put on my clothes. I walk around the rooms but only in the ones where the doors are open. In two of them the doors are locked. So this is how people who work in banks live. They are always being watched. I wouldn’t want all his money if it meant I had to live like that. To always have people watching you is a curse. I turn off the TV.
I sit on the couch. I start to feel a little sad. No, I tell myself. I must be strong. I am strong. I get up and go to the kitchen. I drink from the tap, my mouth around its mouth. I drink lots till my stomach says enough. I feel better, I tell myself and go back to the couch. Why do you feel sad? I ask myself. Because my mother didn’t love me. Gerald is cruel. That is the ugliest thing anyone has ever said to me. It is worse than having a bus crush you. I think of my mother and feel confused. No. She loved me, I tell myself. And I loved her, no matter what Gerald says. He’s just like Allen. He wants to control me. I look around and realise that there are no stupid pigeons watching me, only hidden cameras. You’re never completely on your own, I say. Only when you are born and when you die. Nobody cares when you die. They just want to know what you will leave them. I remember my father saying that about my grandfather after he died. I hope he left me that watch, he kept saying. He never did get it. The relatives came before we did and cleaned out my grandfather. I don’t want to think about my family. But you have to, a little voice says inside me.
What’s there to think about? My mother died. My father died. I hiked to Cape Town with Mandla, Vincent. And now I’m here. There’s nothing much to say. There’s nothing much to think about. I can’t write. I can’t phone my relatives. They don’t care about me anyway. And I don’t miss them. I don’t miss them because they never gave me anything. And that’s all right, at least they didn’t give me bullshit like Cape Town grown-ups. I feel better when I say this. You see. Sea Point. I’m getting stronger.
* * *
He returns and finds me with my clothes on.
“I thought we’d have another go,” he says.
I take off my clothes in the room. His banana dick bounces out of his pants again as he takes them off.
“Wait,” he says and runs into the other room. He puts on the music, different music but still the same whining, stringy music.
“Vivaldi, Four Seasons. I’ve always wanted to do this.”
He lies on top of me and just grinds his hips against mine.
“Why aren’t you getting an erection?” he says.
I think of Toni Braxton and my dick rises.
“That’s better,” he says and carries on rubbing himself against me. “This time I want you to come with me.”
“Ready when you are.”
“Really? Just like that.”
“It’s true.”
“Okay, wait. I’ll tell you.”
He doesn’t tell me. His eyes just start rolling into their whites and he grunts to the music.
“Oh heaven,” he says as the music rises. “Are you coming too?”
“Yes,” I say and nearly laugh at the funny look on his face.
Then he falls flat on me and sighs.
“That was great. You killed me. I’m completely annihilated.”
“It doesn’t take much,” I say.
“You and the music,” he says and gets up to wipe himself. He throws the towel at me. Strange, he usually hands me things. We both put on our clothes and go to the music room. He sits on the chair and smokes alone.
“You like this music, don’t you?”
He says nothing. He looks sad, a little angry or hurt. I can’t tell. Grown-ups are hard to figure out.
“It’s Winter,” he says.
“What?”
“The music. It’s called Four Seasons and now it’s Winter.”
I listen.
“Listen carefully. Can you see the trees without leaves?”
Trees. I know trees. I listen to the music. It is too much. I go into the other room and sit on the couch. This guy is trying to open me up. He thinks he’s clever. Of course he’s clever, he owns a bank. Him and Joyce are all from the same team. Don’t forget that, I remind myself.
“I feel tired,” I say when he comes back.
“I was going to play you this one song by Mussorgsky.”
“I’m really tired,” I say and put on puppy eyes.
“Okay, come,” he says.
We go back to the room. He opens the bed.
“Will this pillow be enough? I can get you another one if you want.”
“No, it’s fine. Actually I like sleeping without one.”
The street, I can hear him thinking, but his maddening manners prevent him from saying it.
“Where are you going to sleep?”
“I don’t know. I might sleep in here. I don’t know. Good-night.” He switches off the light and leaves the door open.
* * *
I get into bed but sleep doesn’t come easily. I stare at the ceiling and try not to think much. Too much thinking is bad for you. Look at all the grown-ups I know. They’re all fucked in the head. They should be smoking zol. And that poor bastard in there, he doesn’t know whether to leave or to come. At least I have new pants and a T-shirt. But I’ll need a new jacket for the days when it gets cold. I know. I’ll buy a jacket from that place in Long Street. I’m sure I can get something there. But I must be careful. I mustn’t buy like a moegoe. I must buy a sensible jacket. Vincent said I must be the blackest person he knows. I still don’t understand what he means by that. He said I must buy from makwerekwere. I can if I want to now; I don’t have to think about Allen. And I don’t think Gerald will mind. In fact I think Gerald wants me to do things for myself. I’m not going to ask him. I’m just going to buy it. That’s right. No thank you, Gerald. I’m just going to buy it.
Now if only I could sleep. My neck hurts. I must sleep now. Tomorrow I’m going to get a new jacket. That’s something to look forward to. And I don’t have to look at Allen anymore or Joyce, that bitch. I hope she gets boils all over her pussy and that stupid white man who does ugly things in the dark with her. I hope his piel rots. They’re both evil. But I’ll miss Sea Point. I’ll still come back when I can. I just won’t go anywhere near them. I’ll just stay on the beach road. And I’ll buy a towel and maybe one day I can take a dip in that pool and buy myself ice cream like I always say I will. It’s all going to be fine. I can take their bullshit. All of them. Even Gerald.
But I hope Vincent doesn’t go. Why did Bafana say that? Was he also fucking with me? No, Bafana likes me. He wouldn’t say that unless it was true. Vincent can’t go. He’s my connection. The only one I have in Cape Town. Without him I’ll have no one. And everyone has a connection, even if it’s just one person in the whole word. No, he can’t go. I’ll talk to him tomorrow. I think of Vincent as my eyes. He’s older than me. He’s seen more, done more. I don’t think anything scares him any more. Everything seems to make sense to him. Vincent, he’s grown-up but not like the others. He doesn’t bullshit. He just says it like it is. And sometimes it isn’t pretty. But that doesn’t worry him. He just stays Vincent, Mandla; the guy I grew up with in Mshenguville. He’s all right, Vincent. He always looks out for me. All the things he tells me, they help me. They help me become like him, a man, a grown-up.
He changes the music. The saddest music I ever heard comes out. But it’s a gentle sadness that doesn’t take you all at once. It just goes by you but you feel it. It’s a soft sadness. I look at the light coming through the room and wonder what he’s doing. But I’m too tired to get up. I just listen to the music while I beg sleep to come.
I can hear the piano. The softest notes seem to fly. Rising and falling like a seagull flying. This guy is fucked, I say to myself. To listen to music like this you must be fucked. And he probably listens to it while his wife is there but she doesn’t know what’s going on in his head. That’s fucked, I say, and listen to the notes rapidly playi
ng before they disappear into quiet, slow notes. The music always ends gently. When the song ends I close my eyes and grab all the sleep I can get in this warm room.
14
He wakes me up early before sunrise and tells me to put on my clothes. There is something different about him. He avoids my eyes as he goes in and out of the room to check if I’m getting dressed. He is already dressed in a suit. For some reason I think of a tree when I see him. The suit makes him look taller. It makes him look like one of those trees that grow straight and tall and have needles. And they are always green.
He gives me a hundred bucks and lets me out of his flat. Alfred watches me like a cat. He watches both of us but makes as if he’s reading his newspaper. “Morning, Mr Lebowitz,” he says. He looks at him and gives him a short “Hi, Alfred.” I bet Alfred sees this all the time when Mrs Lebowitz is away on holiday with the kids. But he says nothing. He works for them. He has to listen to their shit.
I hold the money in my pocket and go. I think of my crutch when I walk. I wonder what that stupid bitch is going to do with it. I stay on the beach road and walk towards Green Point. It’s a long walk because I have to be careful with the other leg. I see Allen on the other side of the road. He’s wearing his RayBans. They are so dark you can never tell who he’s looking at when he wears them. But I know he can see me. I know he can see my pants shining in the light. He’s a prick, I say to myself as I walk. A girl stands on the road near him. A different white girl with long, blonde hair. He only works with white girls. I guess because they are easier to control. Even though they have big mouths one klap usually shuts them up if they’re not on crack. That other bitch who got beaten up when I was there was stupid. She was hooked on crack and she had a big mouth like the coloured girls. They’re full of shit, coloured girls. They’ve got dirty mouths and they never wait. When they see a man walk by, any man, they try to tempt him with their pussy. “Hey, baby, do you want some?” and if the man doesn’t want to pay two hundred bucks for a full house and a happy ending they are the first to swear at him. “Jou ma se poes, man!” Now the black girls are different. There’s always something angry and quiet in their eyes. Black girls talk with their eyes. They look at you and you either know what you want or you just keep walking. I always look at the ground when I pass them. I know their strength and fear it. Some of them look like they could crush a man with their powerful thighs. They look like they can make any bastard come.
Thirteen Cents: A Novel (Modern African Writing Series) Page 10