by JT Lawrence
Bella, on the other hand, was a different story. She was so clingy, so desperate that no matter how badly I treated her, she always came back for more. I didn’t mean to cause her pain: I am a bastard but I do have some warmth in my veins; I had to sting her histrionic heart for her own good. She told me she loved me within a week of meeting me, tried to move in the week after that and, when that didn’t work, tried to introduce me to her high-flier parents. I was cruel: I threw her clothes and bottle of Dior out of the window while it was raining and laughed out loud when she knelt in front of me, romcom-style, black spiders of mascara on her slipping down her cheeks, begging me to love her. I laughed. Not out of malevolence: the situation was ridiculous and I had a hard time taking her seriously. She would have fits of hysteria, tantrums where she would flail into my arms, stopping only when I crushed her against my chest, like a long-haired Fabio in some pulp romance.
And then of course there was Sally Ellis. When I met her in a cigar lounge in Sandton one evening, I knew I had to write about her. The warning signs were all there. A tall, beautiful, redhead (the red hair should have tipped me off but I was, for a while, in her thrall) who seemed mentally stable, intelligent, independent, had fantastic taste in shoes, and a villain in the sack. It was just asking for trouble. The initial month passed with me wanting more of her – a first – so we kept it going for a while longer. We had fun, made each other laugh, got on so well that I began to worry that I liked her company too much.
One night, when the relationship was still half-shiny, after too much to drink, I told her about Emily. No details, obviously, it just came up that I used to have a little sister. I had never told anyone even that. An almost-honest moment and – I should have known better – way too honest for me. Afterwards there was too much emotion in the air, it became hard to breathe. I began to think of reasons I didn’t like her, but she didn’t need much help from me. Her claws had already begun to show. It was as if she had been pretending to be someone else – which she was very good at – but every now and then her mask would slip. In hindsight I guess we were playing a similar game. It took me over two months to get her into bed, but the conquest was about more than sex. I crept into her life and absorbed everything I could. I found her complete lack of warmth fascinating. Behind the mask she was a cruel woman, she treated people abysmally. I had feelings for her. She would humiliate cashiers, chastise waiters at full volume and screech at beggars at intersections to get their grime away from her car. In the beginning the sex was incredible, but that also slipped and towards the end she was aloof and distant. I think I actually used the words “fucking [Sally] was like mounting the abominable snowman, but not as much fun”. Not my most poetic line of prose but you get the picture.
She stopped seeing other people and, I guess, she wanted me to do the same but I have a philosophical objection to monogamy. I just don’t think it’s natural. If you consider all the adultery in the world you have to either believe that man is inherently bad, or that monogamy is just not sustainable. I think that monogamy is a concept created by our forefathers for our own good: a bit like the Koran, or the Bible. The point of printing those wordy epistles was to make the world a better place. Monogamy, as a principle, would mean fewer illegitimate children and venereal disease, with more solid family units to make everyone feel safe. Most countries wouldn’t elect a president who fucks a different woman (or man) every week, preferring to go instead with Happily Married. I guess that makes our country an anomaly, unless you accept polygamy with benefits as a solid family unit. Clinton was thrown out for enjoying the most famous blowjob in history: our guy not only has five wives, but feels the need to shag his groupies on the side. Monogamy, like communism, appears to work only in theory.
I tried to explain this to Sally but she was a little slow on the uptake. Bit by bit I began to realise that one of her (many) personality flaws was jealousy: not the subtle, flattering variety but more the certifiable kind. I joked with her, quoting Hanif Kureishi, asking why people who are good at families have to be smug and assume it’s the only way to live, instead of being blamed for being bad at promiscuity. She didn’t find it funny. I did. She asked me what the hell I knew about family; that’s when it started going very much downhill. I, being very good at promiscuity, used to send her flying into acid rages. Her true character came out in exchanges with other people when she would snap, bite and break people’s necks (metaphorically speaking), like some kind of easy-on-the-eye Tyrannosaurus. It was magic material. I got more words down during that relationship than I ever had before. Once the fighting started in earnest and I had leached absolutely everything I could from her, I didn’t hang around for long. It felt like our elaborate dance was over.
I turned out the manuscript in record time.
I remember feeling relieved, elated. I had this stupid smile. I took her to the most public restaurant I could think of to break up with her, an expensive oyster bar in the Square. By then I didn’t even find her attractive anymore. Those cruel green eyes, thin lips, flat chest, insipid skin. It was like shaking off snow after a long walk home. After helping myself to another glass of chardonnay from the bottle and finishing her naked pink prawn starter, I had to stop myself from skipping out of there. It was my first successful novel. But, I thought as I looked at my wounded Jag, it came at a price.
The threats started a week before the release, when the good reviews hit the press, culminating in the unfortunate tyre-slashing episode. I may have let it slip while we were dating that I would use my first advance cheque as a deposit on the car of my dreams. She knew the car, freshly driven out of the dealership, was my Achilles heel, and forced her cold kitchen knife right through the fantasy. Tyres mutilated, she Picasso’d the doors with her car keys; the gun-metal grey paint never looked the same. Sifiso advised me to lay a charge against her but I couldn’t. I had no proof that it was her and I felt that I did, in a way, deserve it. I had more than enough money to fix it, and to buy the whole indoor soccer club beers the night Frank and I christened her PsychoSally.
She has mostly left me alone since then and only leaves threatening messages on my cell when she has had a particularly bad day, or sees something that reminds her of me, perhaps a steaming turd, or a particularly angry, infected boil, so I am surprised at the venom in this latest attack. Perhaps there is a sequel to Mercenary? A deranged ex is very fertile ground for a story. Little sparks of beginning-thoughts start glinting in my mind until I sit down with a pen and my new notebook. Then they disappear: snuffed out by the pesky winds of self-preservation.
I hope that Francina knows what to do about the writing on the wall. I guess the whole neighbourhood now knows where I live, which isn’t great for privacy. Already paranoid, I will now have to deal with Gawkers.
I moved to this neighbourhood in northern Jozi because I felt people here were rich enough to mind their own business. The Parks: small lock-up-and-go stands on beautiful tree-lined avenues. The kind of suburb that reminds you that Johannesburg is an urban forest. I knew I didn’t need a heated swimming pool, jacuzzi or sauna, nor did I need the cottage with the sky-lit studio. I definitely didn’t need the huge porcelain-tiled kitchen but I must admit that I do like the gadgets (electric and gas plates, giant Smeg fridge, Juicerator, Smoothie-maker, ice-maker, ice-crusher, mini blow-torch, glass toaster with matching panini press, seven-tiered steam machine, wine-cooler, cappuccino-maker …) and God knows I don’t need the other five rooms. But I do love the north-facing one – which I like to call the den – with its double-volume pressed ceilings and the way the light floods in there in the mornings. It is by far the most enchanting working space I have ever had; the two novels I wrote following Mercenary enjoyed their gestation in there. I guess, in a way, I have PsychoSally to thank for it. By the same token I could also thank her for the ridiculous, hefty bond repayment I have to make every month, which will probably contribute to the heart attack I will eventually have, causing me to fall (panini press in hand) into th
e bubbling jacuzzi and, therefore, to my eventual demise, securing her the best revenge without so much as the knowledge of it.
It’s not that I don’t know I sabotage my life. I’m completely aware of the fact I could lead a pretty normal life if I didn’t purposefully fuck everything up so much. But what would I do with a petite housewife in Abercrombie & Fitch and two little thugs for children? What would I write about if I spent all day drinking freshly-pressed beetroot juice laced with vodka and taking the Weimeranas and/or ungrateful kids to the park, seeing the same Smug Marrieds for dinner every Friday night? Perhaps I’d have a demanding silk-smothered mistress, one who makes me lick her stilettos and promise not to leave my wife. Or a stripper prostitute in a scabby hotel room once a week, in a vain attempt to inject some form of dirty excitement into my sad little life. I doubt it would be very entertaining by anyone’s standards. Yet this alternative way of living, the one I have chosen and designed with such care, is catching up with me. I feel myself being sucked into the widening gyre. Things Fall Apart.
Sometimes I wonder if I even have the right to exist. If I am my own invention, isn’t it the same as saying that I am zero to the power of zero? Tapping this foot, tossing this paper ball into the air. Bret Easton Ellis says in his Lunar Park that if one gives one’s life to fiction once, it becomes a character. A shadow of the real thing. No, less than that: a shadow of a shadow.
5
Maybe everyone else was right
Francina lets herself in, as she always does, and stomps her way into the kitchen to make cappuccinos for us. It must be Tuesday or Thursday. By the time I join her she has my paper open on the kitchen table and is halfway through it. Her feet aren’t up on the table but you get the feeling they are.
“You’re out of rusks,” she mumbles, licking a finger to turn the page. It is clear that an article has captured her imagination.
“There are some in the larder,” I say, not knowing how I know this.
“No, Mister Harris, I mean the good ones from Woollies. The pecan nut ones.”
My flat white is strong and hot with lots of foam. The kitchen is already clean – it’s been Francinarised. I wouldn’t cope with a life without Francina. She cooks, cleans, washes, dusts, irons and polishes like a Stepford Wife, without the creepy hairstyle. She wears the best get-up of anyone I know. She’s sixty in the shade but she is always trying something new. Long, preppy socks wrapped around her chunky legs one day, head-to-toe primary-coloured traditional garb the next. Today she has on a yellow raincoat (there’s not a cloud in the sky) and the biggest golden hoop earrings I may have ever seen. She says she spends her (generous) wages on unit trusts but I reckon she likes to buoy the economy with it too.
Also, she makes good snacks.
Francina tears herself away from the newspaper just long enough to look me up and down and furrow her brows.
“You going to wear that shirt, Mister Harris?”
“Is there a problem with this shirt?”
She shrugs and goes back to her reading.
I go to the bedroom to change.
I arrive at Eve’s place at one o’clock. She hates it when people are late, finds it disrespectful, so I always try my best to be on time. Ironic, as I’m usually the one that keeps women waiting. She has been a little cool towards me since our breakfast last week, so I thought I’d invite her out to lunch and attempt to charm her with my beguiling ways. I think she’s still annoyed with me: she said she didn’t have time, so I offered a quick one at her place. She thought I meant lunch.
She opens the door wearing one of her work shirts and an old pair of jeans. She smells of oil paint and Chanel.
“Ouch,” she says, eyebrows raised, then points to the laceration on the side of my head. “Did you get into a fight?”
I follow her through the apartment and into her studio, watching her hips sway in front of me. Christ, it’s hard being near her sometimes. Especially knowing there’s a bed in the next room. Not that my juvenile fantasies of her ever really include a bed. Mostly it’s up against a wall, or in the front seat of the Jag, or the heated pool, or on my kitchen table. But now I can imagine doing it here in the studio, getting covered in paint and …
“So what do you think?” she smiles at me. I feel like a puppy that’s been caught chewing a Manolo.
“Huh?”
“It’s for the bank. The triptych I told you about.”
Eve’s studio is always covered top to bottom in paintings and sculptures, so you have to pay attention if you want to look like you’re not an idiot. There are new drawings of dolls – girls and men and animals – all over the walls. The triptych is easy to spot because it’s shining wet. And it’s the biggest painting in the room. It is of a nude stretched voluptuously across the three panels. Very dark. Erotic.
“God,” I say.
“Do you hate it?” she asks with big eyes.
“No, I think it’s exquisite.”
She smiles like a little girl and takes my hand.
“Now you know why I am so busy. I need to finish it by next week.”
“Nothing like a deadline to kick you up the arse,” I say, not smiling at the irony.
She leads me into the studio’s kitchenette and we begin unpacking the lunch I have brought.
“How’s yours?” she asks.
“Firm but soft to the touch.”
I can’t believe I said that. I’m a complete imbecile. Eve is gracious and gives me a skew smile.
“I meant your deadline.”
She fills the kettle, switches it on and I start to build our sandwiches. Eve is a tea zealot. I keep quiet while I wait for something to say.
“Have you come up with anything good? For your book, I mean.”
I groan and pretend to be overly interested in the olive ciabatta I am sawing.
I don’t want Eve knowing how desperate I really feel. Anyway, I am bad at this, this intimate dialogue. I have always felt silly saying I am having a bad time. It’s self-indulgent. It makes me think of bald kids with leukaemia and makes me feel like even more of a dick, standing here, making a faux-Mediterranean lunch in my nine-hundred-rand-sneakers.
“All writers struggle at some point, even the greats,” she says, as she pauses to lick balsamic syrup off her finger. “Especially the greats. You’re just spoiled because all your other stories came to you so easily.” She pours two cups of what looks like urine into old mismatched mugs.
“It just … it feels different, this time.”
“It’ll come. I believe in you.”
We take the Brie, kiwi and watercress sandwiches through to her makeshift office in the corner, where there are two fold-up chairs and a table. The walls are covered in illustrations and photos and the room is like an artwork in itself.
“Sifiso’s all over me like a venereal disease.”
Venereal disease? Why would I say that in front of Eve? Now she’s going to associate me with herpes, chlamydia, gonorrhoea. God.
“Yes, well, he’s especially good at that,” she laughs and tilts her head. “So what are we going to do to get you over this … whatever it is?”
“I have to do something huge. Something that will eclipse all the others. I just need to figure out what that is.”
Eve makes a face to show me she’s thinking.
“Run a marathon?”
“Done it, and regretted it profoundly. Ended up at the half-way mark in a pub somewhere obscure with no way to get home.”
“Take ecstasy, acid, tik?”
“Yawn. Centuries ago.”
“Date a … er, I don’t know. A transsexual?”
“You know Palahniuk joined a sex-addiction support group? He attended a whole lot of meetings to try to understand what it was about. So that he could write with compassion. So that he knew he was writing the truth.”
“So what are you saying? That you’re not the only crazy writer in the world?”
“Maybe not the only one.”
“How about moving to another country?”
“Gee, thanks.”
“I mean temporarily, to get a new story.”
“Done it. A few times. But Marrakech ’98: unbelievable. That’s where the camel story comes from. Obviously. And then of course there was Bangkok.” Where I ended up staying a little longer than I had planned.
I don’t like talking about Bangkok.
A Thousand Camels, despite the unfortunate name, was one of my most successful short stories. It probably paid for my shower.
A Thousand Camels (digested)
by Slade Harris
A dashing British pilot ardently pursues one of the terrific-looking cabin crew (think Paris Hilton, but with a personality) who has overly-shiny golden blonde hair straight out of a Pantene ad. She plays hard to get because she knows he is married but gives into his advances. (Impossibly romantic scenarios of their courtship in all the beautiful cities in the world and lots of hot, slightly bizarre, hotel sex follow). So far it’s a steamy Mills & Boon romance. This is where the story starts, when the relationship is stripped of its glossy plastic wrapper. The stewardess becomes jealous of the time the pilot spends with his wife and kids (no surprises there). Her bitterness starts eating away at her perfect complexion and she diets compulsively. She screams at him when they spend time together. The pilot, who started off banging a perfect cherubic goddess, now has to put up with a spotty, skinny banshee who’s closed for business. He has a feeling that his wife is suspicious (“Another overnighter? Who with?”) so he decides to break it off with Paris. Paris has other plans. While they are in Marrakech she tells him that if he doesn’t leave his family to be with her, she will go to his wife and tell her everything. She reminds him that she has photos from their more adventurous days. He gives in to her blackmail and assures her that he will break it to his wife when he gets home. The next day they go walking in the market, smiling and bargaining, holding hands, when all of a sudden her hand is no longer in his. He looks around but can’t see her anywhere and raises the alarm. It appears that Paris has been kidnapped (the stewardesses are warned before the stopover in Marrakech and Egypt to not go out alone, especially in crowded places, especially if they are blonde, because of the frequent rate of kidnapping in these areas). Late that night in a seedy bar, the pilot has the need to unburden himself to the bartender (this is the bartender I met, who told me the story – entertaining guy – I ended up spending many a night drinking sweet wine and eating schmutzullas at his bar). So he tells the bartender how clever he is: he managed to sell his overbearing mistress to a local tout who offered him a thousand camels for her. So not only did he manage to rid himself of his little problem without bloodying his hands (not immediately, anyway) but he also made a lot of money. Ha ha (dusting of hands), ain’t life grand? Another whisky please. And one for you.