Oscar: An Accident Waiting to Happen

by Melinda Ferguson

  The next day his best friend Alex joined us for the weekend. We had known Alex and his siblings for years, so he fitted right into our family group.

  On Saturday morning Samantha, Oscar, Alex and I went wine tasting, at Warwick Wine Estate, a beautiful wine farm with green lawns, huge shady trees and a dam, just outside Stellenbosch.

  We had the most amazing day. When Oscar was on top form he was just fantastic; he had a great sense of humour, and thankfully, unlike the night before, on this day he had brought his A game.

  While taking a tour of the estate, Sam and Oscar drank out of the love cup, especially created for two people in love, which Oscar had specially requested. When they drank out of it, everyone around them was struck by what a divinely romantic couple they were.

  All that day, Oscar was very demonstrative in his affection for Sam and vice versa; they both seemed to bring out the sweetest parts of each other. Sam loved it when Oscar held her on his lap and this Saturday was one of the loveliest times I remember of them being together.

  We got home that evening, had an early dinner, and went to bed. The next day was the actual day of Greg’s 16th birthday. I got up early and asked everyone to sign the card. I must say I did find it quite odd that he hadn’t bought Greg a present, not even a token gift or a card or anything. I had begun noticing this side of Oscar. Despite being incredibly well off – he was earning millions a year at this stage – he found it very hard to give. He seemed to hold on to everything. He was always saying how much richer everyone else was than he was.

  The day before, for instance, while we were driving to the wine tasting, Oscar had begun talking about all the Nike shoes he had – he used to get in the region of R100 000 ($10 000) worth of free sponsored Nike goods every month – whatever he wanted, he could get.

  So as he was driving he jokingly said that he wanted to ask Nike to give him a pair of shoes in every age from baby size to adult, so that when he had kids one day, he would have a pair for each milestone. We all laughed and enjoyed the story, but there was an awkwardness left hanging in the air after he finished.

  He always used to say to Sam that she should choose a pair of Nikes, and he would get them for her, but in all the time they were together he never produced them… I found it strange that he didn’t seem to have any recollection of his promise as he told us the story of Nikes and his future children.

  Sam, who was studying for her marketing degree and working part time for me, wasn’t earning much money, but always gave him presents – beautiful Christmas and birthday presents – whereas he almost never gave her anything, not even a Christmas card. It was very strange that he couldn’t even give a token of his good wishes.

  It’s not that Sam expected it, but she was over the moon when he did give her a bunch of flowers on Valentine’s Day.

  He would often say things like: “I’m shopping for your Christmas present” or “I am going to get you this or that.” There were always promises, but then nothing would come of them.

  I was often amazed that he would come visit or stay at our house and never bring a thing, not a slab of chocolate, or a bottle of wine, as most people would, when visiting. It just never seemed to enter his head. He didn’t seem able to think beyond his own needs.

  But once, when we were all out with friends of his and I took out my purse to pay, his friend stopped me, saying Oscar would never allow me to pay, as he always took care of the bill. I noticed then that whenever there were friends of his out with us, he always paid the bill graciously.

  I must say he was generous to his brother and sister – he bought Aimee a car, he often gave to charity and he gave freely to people like car guards and the homeless.

  But over time I got to witness something in Oscar that just couldn’t or wouldn’t allow himself to give and I don’t only mean material things, I mean giving from the heart, from a space within. It seemed to stem from a much broader, much deeper, much sadder place… I think it had a lot to do with him feeling isolated, like a poor neglected little boy who had no real family. It was as though he felt deprived on a very core level and as a result it felt to me like he couldn’t relate to the emotional needs of those around him. In fact, when he was around our family, amongst people who found it easy to give and take, I think sometimes it brought out the worst in him. There were times that he appeared to me to almost regress into a dark and semi-infantile space after spending time with us, like during that weekend of Greg’s 16th birthday.

  Greg had also invited Ashley, a good friend, who flew in from Johannesburg for the celebrations, and Greg had made a plan to go ten-pin bowling. We Googled places and found what sounded like a cool alley at Canal Walk in Cape Town.

  As usual, my older son Ty, like a typical varsity student, had a Sunday-morning hangover and was running late, so things started a bit slowly. Oscar began to get antsy. Gone was his laid-back, relaxed vibe from the previous day. He seemed anxious and kept saying we needed to get moving.

  When Oscar was in a good mood, he was great, but as soon as he got into a foul one, it was hard not to be affected by it. I always felt very uncomfortable when his moods switched from good to bad.

  We were still getting ready when Oscar started to become restless, pacing, getting up, looking for things in his bags, then sitting down again. Eventually I couldn’t take the tension and told Sam, Oscar and Alex to go ahead to Canal Walk and we would meet them there once Ty arrived. They went ahead and once my oldest son got to the house, we were ready to join Sam, Oscar and Alex who were having breakfast at Mugg & Bean.

  They had just finished breakfast when we arrived. We sat down to order and, as we did, Oscar immediately wanted to get up and do something else. I kept quiet, trying not to get tense, since it was Greg’s birthday.

  Oscar, Alex and Sam decided to go and see what the ten-pin bowling looked like. Off they went while we finished our breakfast and waited for Greg’s friend Ashley to join us.

  As we were finishing, Sam phoned and said, “Mom, the ten-pin bowling here isn’t nice, I don’t think we should play.” Well that really infuriated me, since the ten-pin bowling was Greg’s special request; it had nothing to do with whether Oscar liked it or not. But Sammy kept insisting that the ten-pin bowling really wasn’t “very nice”. I assumed she was being prompted by Oscar in the background.

  So we paid the bill and joined them. Even though we had come all the way into town because Greg had wanted to play, eventually they convinced all of us that the ten-pin bowling was a bad idea. So we returned to our cars, still unsure of what we should do next. I could see my birthday son was disappointed.

  It was becoming obvious that this day was no longer about Greg, it was becoming all about Oscar.

  Now with our plans in pieces, everyone got on their phones, trying to decide what to do. Oscar suddenly said he wanted to go back home, with the usual “I can’t handle being seen in public” line. Then Sammy and Oscar convinced everyone to go to Caprice in Camps Bay for cocktails. It was lunch time by now, that’s how much time we had wasted, just milling around doing nothing.

  The weather wasn’t great, it was overcast and windy, perfect ten-pin bowling weather, but not really suitable for Camps Bay cocktails. We all arrived at Caprice and everyone ordered drinks. I felt very uncomfortable – it was my 16-year-old son’s birthday, so going for cocktails was not actually appropriate. Here he had his young friend with him, and they were wanting to have fun, go bowling, not spend hours sipping on adult cocktails.

  At that point, Oscar got on his two phones, SMSing, instant messaging, BBMing and intently texting. He definitely seemed agitated, angry about something. It felt like something was up. But he wasn’t divulging anything. I was acutely aware of how all of this was ruining what should have been Greg’s special day, and was very distressed.

  With each text it seemed his mood was growing fouler. It was clear there was something amiss.

  Later, I wondered who on earth he could have been having such intense communica
tion with. I couldn’t help but feel suspicious. What was he hiding?

  As the afternoon progressed, from initially being irritable and anxious, he now grew incredibly quiet and sullen. The atmosphere at the table was heavy from his mood. I kept trying to keep the fun element going, for my son; I was all too aware that this day was being entirely spoiled by Oscar’s strange behaviour. What really struck me was how unaware he was of the uncomfortable atmosphere he was creating, of how inappropriate his behaviour was. What should have been a joyous occasion was now ruined.

  Finally I asked him what was wrong.

  He said he couldn’t talk about it, didn’t want to be there… wanted to go home. He mumbled something about one of his friends’ dads passing away, looking decidedly uncomfortable.

  Now the only reason we were at Caprice in the first place was because of Oscar and Sam. I certainly didn’t want to be there! I felt anxious and sad and sick to my stomach that Greg’s birthday had turned out this way, after all my planning. I should have put my foot down at Canal Walk and insisted we play ten-pin bowling. But now it was too late.

  Eventually I said to Oscar, “You know what, let’s just pack up and go.” Then he smiled and I told him, ironically, that this was the first time he had smiled all day.

  I suggested we all go home, hire a few movies, get takeaways and try to salvage what little was left of Greg’s birthday, so we went back to Somerset West.

  Once we were all back home, my older son Tyron told me how, all the way home, Oscar had shouted and sworn at his friend Alex who was driving the car.

  Oscar and Alex then picked up some exercise gear and went straight to the gym. Not a word was spoken – no apology, nothing. Not a single word of acknowledgement that he had ruined the day. That was Oscar.

  In my opinion, Oscar fell easily into playing the role of a victim, the main star in his own tragic movie. It was as though he had a screen filtering out the world, like he couldn’t see anything else besides what he felt, what he needed. Over the time we knew him, the hole in his soul seemed to get bigger and bigger. He had a constant need to fill it up with adulation and attention from admirers, especially from beautiful women; indeed, this need was so apparent in Oscar, it appeared to have no bounds.

  CHAPTER 7

  Oscar’s Women

  * * *

  If I had known that Oscar was still involved with another woman when he started dating my daughter, I would never have given my blessing or encouraged their relationship the way I did. But that’s the thing with people – we usually only see the missing pieces, the gaping inner wounds and dysfunctional syndromes afterwards, when it’s too late.

  By the time we started having suspicions that Oscar was seeing someone else – at times possibly more than one person – too many emotions were involved; he had already captured Sammy’s heart and things had gone too far. Plus it was hard to ever really know what Oscar was thinking or feeling. He was so adept at sidestepping issues. Whenever Sammy raised questions or voiced her suspicions that he might be being unfaithful… he would simply deny everything.

  You never really knew where you stood with him. Or why he needed to tell some of the stories that came out of his mouth.

  Like the time he told us he spent Christmas alone, eating service-station pies when he actually enjoyed a lovely Christmas feast with his Greek friend Alex and Alex’s family. Or like the time he told us he was going out for a quiet evening with his brother and sister. It was the night of his and Sammy’s shared birthday. It was very early on in their relationship, on 22 November 2011, the day of their actual birthdays, when Sam was writing her final matric exam. Oscar didn’t pop in as one would have expected a doting boyfriend to do. He told us they would be going to a restaurant his mom always took him to on his birthday. Of course the mere mention of his mom tugged at our heart strings and we all collectively felt sorry for him. Sometime later friends of ours told us that they had been at the same restaurant and had seen Oscar having a big dinner party out on the town with a whole lot of old school friends and family. It appeared that he had taken his ex-girlfriend along with him as his date. The following day he celebrated his shared birthday with Sammy without giving any indication that his affections might have been elsewhere the night before. When we discovered his indiscretion later, Sammy confronted him and he denied it, promising he wasn’t seeing any other girls. (Eight months later he in fact admitted he had been unfaithful to Sam in a confessional email.)

  Much later, just before Oscar got back from the Olympics, Sammy told me that his ex, Jenna, had contacted her on Facebook and told her that she and Oscar had been seeing each other on and off for the past five years and that Oscar wanted her back and that she was the woman of Oscar’s dreams. This was during July and August 2012, when he had been trying his darnedest to get Sammy back, declaring his undying love for her. It was hard to know what to believe, with all the contradictions and discrepancies that constantly kept emerging.

  In the beginning, in the early days of their relationship we tended to take his word as total truth as he was so convincing. But there was an incident where I saw a part of him that I found really disturbing. It was in the early days, towards the end of 2011 – they had been dating for a few months and we were at a friend’s place, whose house we were renting in Dainfern. Oscar arrived in his super-fast white Nissan GTR and offered to take our friend for a spin. I just assumed that they went for a drive down the road, aware of the restrictions that came along with being in a built-up suburb, but when they came back one of the neighbours who had a young baby came storming into the house and shouted at our friend for speeding in our area. She was really angry and went on about how there were always young kids playing on the streets, and how dangerous speeding in the area was. Being a gentleman our friend immediately took the blame and apologised profusely. During the whole showdown Oscar was crouching down behind the kitchen counter, with a huge grin on his face.

  Oscar had been driving the car.

  I felt really awful about this incident – Oscar was our guest and we were staying in someone else’s house and there was no reason why our friend should have been made to look like the villain in front of his neighbour. Of course Oscar should have owned up, but I assumed that he hadn’t in case the incident went into the papers and got published. It made me wonder whether Oscar ever took real responsibility for anything. Did he ever accept the blame for the things that he did wrong in his life? Instead, he thought it was funny. In fact, I think he was quite proud that he got away with it. That he had pulled the wool over the neighbour’s eyes. He didn’t appear to feel guilty about it at all.

  I found it increasingly worrying, this blur between truth and fantasy. But at the time we almost always looked the other way, forgave him, or made up an excuse for him. Later his good-boy image would begin to wane. But I think that out of all of us, Sam was the one who began to see the cracks first and tended to believe him the least.

  I think Oscar deeply feared the possibility of the unsuspecting public and his adoring fans seeing him in a bad light. I believe that’s one of the reasons Oscar resented the media so much, at least the ones he considered “unfriendly”, those who were critical of him or who published stories that questioned his carefully constructed good-boy image. Oscar knew that the media were capable of busting right through the public relations bubble surrounding him. All that control he tried to exert in most areas of his life became very tenuous when it came to journalists who had the power to rip the illusion into tiny pieces. As a result, he kept a little black book where he noted the names of any journalist or publication who told “untruths” about him or anyone who contradicted his pristine image of himself. They were duly blacklisted. Requests by these journalists for interviews or comments from Oscar were ignored.

  I can only imagine how the endless “bad-boy” and scandalous stories, along with galleries of pictures, now posted all over the Internet of all the women in his past, must infuriate him today.

  When I lo
ok at those photographs of some of the women Oscar “dated”, fell in love with, or was seen around town with, from first girlfriend Vicky Miles to Jenna Edkins, to Melissa Rom, to Erin Stear, to Sammy and then of course Reeva, it’s almost eerie how similar they all look. All blonde women, mostly with long straight hair. Pretty. Petite and slim. All with perfect cover-girl looks. The “Oscar Type”.

  It breaks my heart to see my sweet, beautiful Samantha lined up amongst them. I have often wondered about what lies behind all those women’s eyes, in their one-dimensional poses. Is there a common hurt, a shared trauma behind each of those perfect smiles? Were they all party somehow to protecting Oscar’s public image as a clean-living, well-rounded South African sports hero? Were they all linked by a shared fear of Oscar’s unpredictable behaviour? Or did his charming façade remain fixed in place with them?

  On the other hand, I have often wondered what effect all these perfect women had on Oscar, given his disability. Maybe deep down all of them in some way made Oscar feel his own imperfections and his disability more acutely, which might in the end have driven him over the edge. Maybe all his desperate attempts to control his women and treat them almost like inanimate objects were all because somewhere their perfection reminded him too much of the imperfections within himself.

  He has admitted that his penchant for blondes started off when he was seven or eight years old, back in primary school when he developed a crush on fair-haired, blue-eyed, tomboyish Faryn Martin. In Blade Runner he describes following her around like a love-struck puppy until finally he begins “dating” her – going to movies and ice skating, holding hands and falling in love.

  In 2004, when Oscar was 17, still in high school, he met Vicky Miles, who he says in his book was the “big love” of his life. Over the following two years there would be plenty of ups and downs, break-ups, make-ups, tears and lots of intensity. Signs of Oscar’s overly romantic side came creeping through – he once blew up 200 balloons on Valentine’s Day in 2005 that he hung up on the fence and in trees along the driveway at Vicky’s house. Then with a can of spray paint, he wrote I LOVE YOU TIGER on the road in front of the gate. Others might have labelled this obsessive behaviour.