by Rémy Ngamije
“Then one day,” Godwin said, “we all met DFB.”
Silmary palmed her face once more.
“So we’re in Canal Walk, right,” said Séraphin. “We’re going to watch Transformers. Shit was a massive part of my childhood, so I have my Bumblebee T-shirt on. We’re so eager to see this film we arrive an hour early so we don’t have to stand in popcorn lines and shit. Tickets have been pre-booked. We’re in the line to enter the cinema, yeah, I turn around and Angie and Darth Fucking Boyfriend are in the line behind us. And we can’t avoid them because this moron” – he pointed to Godwin – “decided to greet them.”
“I couldn’t resist,” Godwin said. “And let me tell you, guys, DFB was so handsome. He looked like a GQ model. He had those bluer-than-blue eyes that have seen adventure.”
“We technically haven’t met Angie at this point,” Yasseen said. “We’ve only seen her entering and leaving res. We kinda hate her because of what her Sauce is doing to our friend, but at the same time we know Séraphin’s poisoning himself. We all introduce ourselves. Séraphin chokes when it’s his turn. And I don’t know why she does it, but Angie points at his T-shirt and turns to DFB, who’s wearing an Optimus Prime tee, and says: Look, it’s Mumblebitch.”
“BRU!”
The High Lords and Silmary looked for the source of the exclamation. It came from further down the table. Everyone seated at the table was invested in the story.
“You don’t know how Séra is when you aren’t quick on the draw,” Godwin said. “He’s an asshole. And by the time this happened, he’d spent the greater part of the term being the worst friend to us.”
“We fucking laughed at him,” Richard said.
“Imagine,” Adewale said, “treating us like shit for a girl who’d say that about him to her boyfriend in front of his friends.”
“Yoh! It was so cold,” said Richard. “Anyway, the cinema isn’t ready for the screening so we have to wait a bit longer. We speak to DFB, also known as Chad. He’s pretty cool. He’s been to every damn country. Chad’s been to Chad. Chad’s been to Zim. Chad’s been to Nigeria. Chad’s been to Kenya. And he doesn’t talk about the places like a tourist either. He knows all the places to get good food. Places even we don’t know about and we come from the damn places. He even starts recommending things for us to check out! Imagine.”
“Chad’s even been to Rwanda,” James said. “Talking about how nice the people are after the horror, how clean it is, the gorillas, everything. He asks Séraphin if he’s been back and all our boy can do is say he hasn’t. Chad’s sounding like a better Rwandan than Séraphin at this point. We’re quite ready to trade him for Séra. We don’t even know why Angie’s messing around with Séraphin in the first place when she has Chad.”
“Then we go into the movie,” Godwin said. “And we’re a fucking mess whenever Bumblebee croaks on screen.”
“So Angie cold shoulders him for two weeks,” Richard said. “We’re sure our boy’s losing it. But we’re all hoping it’s all part of the healing process.”
“He hooked up with her again, didn’t he?” asked a voice further down the table.
“Like Peter fucking Pan,” said Godwin.
“In my defence, it was the last time,” Séraphin said. “So she comes over again. This time I can’t even put in the work because all I can think about is DFB. We get to talking. I ask her what she sees in DFB and why she can’t be with me. Stupid question, I know. I didn’t know about questions with answers that could derail your entire fucking year. Without warning, she says Chad is a future and I’m not. I ask what that means. Yeah, I know, second mistake. She says she likes me but there’s no room for another black man in her life besides the one who made her a long time ago.”
“That,” said Silmary, “is super fucked up.”
“Okay, so now I’m pissed off. I realise this girl needs to go. But then I get an erection. Why’re you looking at me like that? What was I going to do with it? I decide to get a last one for slavery and Nelson Mandela. But after that I was done with her. Swear to god. I played Al Pacino’s “Inches” speech at least once a day to keep sane. I finally became a Remms student, climbed Table Mountain, went to the seaside, even did tourist shit like Mzoli’s. I was getting better, bit by bit.”
“Why do I have the feeling you went and did something stupid?” Silmary asked.
“Because closure is a fool’s hope and I was the clown king,” Séraphin replied. “I texted her. Don’t roll your eyes like that. Who at this table hasn’t done dumb shit like that? Thought so. Anyway, I text her and tell her I think we had a good thing and we should let each other be. I try to end things on a poetic note. She used to have weird feelings she wasn’t doing enough with her life, that she was never good enough for anything. So I told her:
Sans_Seraph—An_G_Liq: You stack up. You measure up.
And whatever happens, you changed my world.
“And what did she say?”
An_G_Liq—Sans_Seraph: Your world is small.
Even the High Lords sucked in their breath. The conclusion never softened even after numerous retellings.
“She broke something inside him with that line,” Yasseen said.
“Why didn’t you just quit her sooner?” Andrew, sidelined by his absence from the episode, spoke up. “That’s what I’ve never been able to understand.”
“I mean, you’re a pretty good-looking guy,” Silmary said. “You could’ve gotten with someone else.”
In a phone chat, later, Bianca and Séraphin will dissect the statement, discussing just what “pretty good-looking guy” means. But at the time they flag it and move on with the conversation.
“You don’t quit The Sauce, The Sauce quits you,” Bianca said.
“You don’t understand how low my self-esteem was then,” Séraphin said. “Angie looked good. It’s the PGB – the Pretty Girl Bonus. You stick shit out just because you’re scared you won’t find another one as pretty.”
“Don’t forget the black guy hierarchy either,” said Godwin. “Black guys got levels for shit they’ll put up with.” He staggered the levels in the air: “White at the top, because bonus pussy points. Then Coloured girls, because light skin. Black at the bottom, because, well, life. Of the three, black guys don’t know how to give up Coloured girls. They’re best of both worlds: ass like a black girl, hair like a white girl.”
“But Coloured girls are the devil,” Richard said. “It’s easy to give up black girls because they give you up first. They’ll get angry at you. Their friends will hate you. Their mothers, grandmothers, and ancestors will hate you. Then they’ll do some women’s spiritual camp and get on Team Jesus. Once they’ve reached that stage you’ll be denounced and denied.”
“White girls just go cold,” Richard said. “They just decide you don’t exist.”
“But Coloured girls, jirre jissus,” Yasseen said, “they’ll download your soul, put it in a jar, keep it on a shelf, and shake it every once in a while just for shits and giggles.”
“Coloured girls are not for the faint of heart or weak of soul,” Séraphin said. “Just ask Bee. After that I became a monk. Meditated on the grand mysteries of life.”
Yasseen snorted. “He’s giving you the severely abridged version.”
“He returned to normal life for a while,” Godwin said.
“Eating, exercising, getting out more—”
“—and generally not being a cranky bastard—”
“Sleeping,” Richard said.
“Alone,” James added. “It was all quite impressive, really.”
“It didn’t last long, did it?” Silmary asked.
Séraphin nodded his head dejectedly. “When you’re hurt, or when you think you’ve been hurt, you have two choices. To hurt or to do the homework.” Séraphin picked some crumbs of a serviette. “Homework is a hard choice to make. You have to fix yourself, pick up your part of the blame, make peace with whatever happened, and move on. It’s the smart and right thing
to do. Then there’s the other thing almost everyone does: none of the above.”
“It was Sera-Fix or Sera-Fire,” said Yasseen with a grin.
“And I chose the fire,” said Séraphin.
XXI
The ashes in Séraphin’s wake are an arsonist’s lullaby. Fire is a callous thing and what it consumes is sometimes not known until its distinct absence is noted much, much later. By then it is often too late to replace what has been lost, and so one has to learn to live without that which did not have to be lost in the first place. So it was with Séraphin who refused to do the homework, choosing, instead, to pursue the hurt.
When Séraphin finally survived the Angelicapocalypse – they gave it a name – he took a sabbatical from all things reproductive for what seemed like a respectful duration. The month-long mid-year holiday in Windhoek was freezing and lonely, self-inflicted, and Séraphin spent the days nursing his perceived slights. He returned to Cape Town in the cold, rainy winter of that year, with Ini Kamoze’s “Hotstepper” narrating his lex talionis.
The strut was perfected. Never again would he pay more than the standard fare for taxis. A dedicated gym routine succeeded in recasting his physique. The hurt was permitted to stew for too long. Cape Town quivered and quaked with each step he took as he descended from his bus.
“Fire and flames,” said the first Séraphin.
“Forward and march,” said the second.
Burn, baby, burn.
First came Nicole, pretty and fleeting, at the Remms East African Society’s annual party. Its billing as the hunting grounds of white girls looking for an African adventure was not found wanting. With Nameless’s “Ninanoki” in the background it was a one-shot-one-kill kind of night.
Then a few days later there was Monique, who was stripped out of her clothes almost as quickly as their time together pulled itself off the calendar. Eleanor followed soon after and she was gone in sixty seconds, probably less. There was no need for their bathroom rendezvous at Richard’s friend’s house party to be called anything other than what it was, a happening. Shyann was a senior, prepossessing and open-minded as far as race was concerned, and, maybe, she and Séraphin could have been a thing had Tasneem, who was equally open of mind – and other things – had not come along and displaced her.
There came Raeesa, Robyn, Taytum, and Naomi. They proved to be a tough balancing act. They all lived in the surrounding female residences and one weekend their menstrual cycles synchronised. Poor Séraphin was forced to watch terrible dramas with each of them as he made his rounds. Two and a half weeks of fooling around with Séraphin culminated in each of his carefully co-ordinated concubines leaving him without a distraction for a month: Raeesa found a boyfriend; Robyn got bored; Taytum caught a bad case of the conscience about not telling Naomi she was in on her best friend’s act and called it quits. It was not long after that that Naomi asked the twenty-mark question, which is often skipped in these types of examining situations: “What is this?”
“Fun,” said Séraphin. Soon after that Naomi refused to return Séraphin’s text messages or calls. No matter, thought Séraphin. There was too much drama in the second half of the alphabet.
So he went back to the start with Aisha, Alyssa, and Caitlin. They, too, like those who came before, overlapped and became tangled like thread in a ball of string. Bored, Séraphin dropped them.
Mia worked in the emerging social media arm of a local news company, which, then, was as cool and cutting edge a profession as anyone could hope to have. Privacy was not yet a concern. Friendships, familial relations, and love aided by algorithm seemed like the thing of the future. Mia was considerably older than Séraphin. Her figure spoke of early morning runs, juicing and detox fads, the supremacy of salads, and a religious approach to yoga. They met at a rooftop party downtown. Godwin had secured tickets through a friend of his who worked for the fashion brand that was being launched. The designers were touting their creations as a movement—the advent of the age of following demanded that people feel as though they were team members and game changers rather than mere consumers. “We’re leaving the stage where things are merely things,” Mia explained to Séraphin. “Everything is experiential now. Your brand needs to be more than utility. It has to be a friend.”
Séraphin was standing with Richard and Yasseen looking for a floating tray with its minuscule finger foods and flutes of champagne. Mia was doing the same. When one passed they teamed up to arrest its passage. Mia found their boyish energy infectious. When it became clear she had zeroed in on Séraphin the other two melted into the party to leave them conversing about the blandness of the music.
“You can’t dance to this drum and bass shit,” he said. It sounds like computers sending out mating calls to each other. This party needs something to get people moving.”
“People who come to these kinds of parties don’t usually dance,” she said. “They come to see and be seen. For once, though, I can tell my girlfriends I saw something nice.” Her eyebrows see-sawed at him.
“Game recognises game.” Séraphin served a smooth backhand back into her court.
“How old are you?”
“Old enough to do whatever you want to do.” No seven ha-has, not even one he-he. Séraphin had changed. His spirit power was over nine thousand.
What Mia wanted to do was drive across Cape Town to Bloubergstrand where she stayed, undress Séraphin, and put a squeeze on him tighter than a drought water restriction. When she whispered this to him he swallowed audibly and said, “Well, okay then.”
Richard, Yasseen, and Godwin did not even bother looking for Séraphin at the end of the night. The squeezing lasted until ten o’clock the next morning when, after a breakfast of muesli, yoghurt, and freshly-pressed orange juice Mia asked Séraphin where he wanted to be dropped off. The drive back across Cape Town was sunny and buoyant, both of them distracted by the evening’s activity, and both looking for an excuse to broach the subject of a possible second meeting. When they arrived in the city centre, Séraphin told her Remms was the destination. The polished white Range Rover made quick work of the twists and turns leading to the university. She blanched when Séraphin directed her to the Biko House courtyard.
“You’re a student?” she asked.
“I thought you knew,” he said.
“Get out!”
“What’s the matter?”
“My son is in this residence!”
The screech of the fleeing tyres cancelled out the possibility of a reunion.
Séraphin never did find out who Mia’s son was, although they shared a breakfast table once. He introduced Séraphin to anime like Bleach, Death Note, Full Metal Alchemist, One Piece, and Claymore. “You have to watch it in Japanese with subtitles,” Mia’s son said. “The dubbed versions are kak weird.”
Zainab was Cape Malay and Muslim. She was also infected with apostasy but still refused to eat bacon. When Ramadan came he assumed that she would not observe the fast but she did, albeit with some modifications. No liquid or food would pass her mouth from sunrise to sunset. But as soon as evening came, parts of Séraphin would be served up for iftar.
Rachel called in sick for a week when Séraphin walked into her apartment. On the day she was nearly fired she looked at Séraphin lying in her bed, using his hands to redirect his blood flow to distracting parts of his anatomy and accidentally said, on the phone, “Something’s just come up and I gotta sit on it.” She decided Séraphin was not good for her career prospects.
One of Biko House’s receptionists, Derrick, refused to announce Séraphin’s visitors. That was the day the Ashlynn drama happened. The previous night Derrick had shared a supper table with Séraphin’s friends. The two groups gelled until Derrick, in the flowing conversation between the two sides about football and women, asked Séraphin why he had never seen Séraphin with a black woman. “Dude, you’ve got more Ws on your sheet than Barcelona this season,” Derrick said.
“It just happens that way,” Séraphin sai
d. “Is that a problem?”
“I was just asking.”
“You weren’t just asking, Derrick. So say what you want to say.”
“Nothing, man. Chill.”
Godwin said, “White girls are less work. Date, movie, dinner, maybe a little bit of smooth talking to put her mind at ease that her parents or friends won’t know, and then you’re in. You can’t pull that shit with black girls. You have to run circles and sacrifice a small goat, and if she is light skinned you need to call in favours from the Big J. Light-skinned girls are a problem. And even if it goes well, you have to pray that Richard doesn’t show up and steal her.”
“You won’t let that go, will you?” said Richard. “It was just that one time.”
“You hooked up with a black girl?” asked Derrick.
Godwin shook his head. “Plural. Black girls.”
“How was it?”
“How was what?” asked Richard.
“Hooking up with a black girl?”
“Wait, wait,” said Séraphin, “you expect there to be a difference? Like what exactly? Her lady parts to have a different anatomical structure? Or do you think black girls do some devil dance before coitus?”
“I was just asking,” said Derrick.
“Your questions are fucking stupid, bro.”
It sucked for Séraphin because Derrick was on reception duty when Ashlynn came to visit. Derrick told her she could just make her way to Séraphin’s room. The soft knock on Séraphin’s door should have served as a warning. His friends thumped on his door when they were looking for him. And no one ever came over unannounced, Biko rules. Since Séraphin was a decent dancer but no Michael Jackson he never stopped to ask: “Who is it?”
The screaming went on for a while, with Ashlynn trying to attack Noëmie as she tried to squeeze past Séraphin and exit his room. The story of the confrontation seeped across the Biko House fraternity, spilling over into the neighbouring female residences where Séraphin was nurturing some prospects. Séraphin became persona non grata. June, July, and August saw him in a sexual exile as bleak and as wide as the Karoo wilderness.