We’re an average age of ten years old, all of us, in this pic. That’s me, back row, 4th left. Left of me is Andrew, right of me is Phillip (we three louts) who became my best pal two years later. Far right in the second last row is Sebastian who was the fastest runner in our high school much later. Sebastian and I used to steal petrol out motorcars every Friday night in Std 9 because Lawrence owned a car and if you wanted to ride, you supplied the petrol. I was no mean sportsman at school but when Sabs and I were pinching petrol and we got a cop alert, I could keep up with him sprinting to the getaway car with half-full or whatever gerry-can in hand. We travelled the whole South Coast and Transkei in a Fiat 850, hunting for waves, four-up in this tiny car including surfboards, bags and food. But back to the pic: Fifi is on the far left in row second to front. Always the class honey pie and cute as hell, Fifi also got the leading role for the school play which featured a painted castle as backdrop. Can’t remember the name of the play but the theme song went, “Open up the shutters let the sun come through, flowers in the garden waiting for you, pull back the curtains…” Something like that. These are all honey pies and good guys, no idiots in our school (except I became one later, much later) but if you wanted to know which little girl really steals my heart, thinking back now, it is Linda (tall, just behind teacher to right) she is what I consider to be utterly utterly beautiful not only in looks, but in ways. She was tallish, grey-blue eyed with soft, fluttering eyelashes like a young mare, with an ever-so-slight gap between the front teeth, demure, shy, languid, dimpled, and just so goddamned gorgeous, feminine, a real little lady but not prude, I remember she’d give off shy little giggles every now and then, and she hung out with a shorter friend (can’t remember her name) and would cup her hand over her shorter friend’s ear and whisper something to her, you know, when little girls like to confide in their pals about, say, a little boy – and giggle. You, Linda; you were other-worldly to this hopeless romantic, come to think of it you were breath-taking, I get all weepy thinking of you. You, Linda, should have been my Valentine’s last night. Perhaps in another life. So now you know my tastes in women. I have had a lump in my throat and watery eyes all evening from just looking at this photo. Moving. Utterly, utterly shaking, stirring to the soul. It is at moments like these that I feel caught up in the eternal moment, when the moment just freezes and feels like an eternity. And Love is the one necessary constituent for these moments of lucidity to happen. There MUST be love. My god, this life is beautiful! I just wish I could share it with someone worth sharing it with. Like a Linda.
What awesome days! What beautiful people. Look at the little girl with the bandage on her arm and plaster on her knee, bless her!
We schooled in Westville, Durban, and this era-1969 was when apartheid was rock ‘n rolling along and three men were about to supposedly land on the moon and most of our families had black domestic servants. Artie (Athalia) was our maid and like my second mother and her son Kenneth shared the same bed with me for eight years. Little black kid! – in the height of apartheid? His English was better than his Zulu and my Zulu was almost on a par with my home language English. I could read and speak and understand Latin properly at age fourteen, I’d read 150-page full-on Latin books, borrowed from my grandfather… Kenneth was younger than me and hadn’t started school yet but when he did he went off to Kwa-Mashu and I never saw him again and this broke my heart. At eleven years of age and a best friend disappears, it hurts. Even if he was black. So all you fucking idiots who scream Marwinsing WAYCISS go FUCK yourselves you cunts, go fuck yourselves… because you know nothing… about me. I am an enigma. And I like it like that. A black that I hate I will call a kaffir to his face and a white that I hate I will call a cunt to his face and that’s how it works here.
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