As Kai swung his 15 year old car into the right turn of the causeway that led to the club, JP selected their traditional entrance song. Reliant K blared through the speakers:
“We are the pirates who don’t do anything, we just stay at home and lie around. And if you ask us to do anything, we’ll just tell you we don’t do anything.”
The boys loved the shock factor in being random, and had no qualms about going against the pretentious grain – in fact they went out of their way to resist trend. Many were the days of going to a crowded mall on the weekend and making swimming motions while lying on the floor. Kai’s older self would wonder whether this was a way of constructing their emerging identities by rejecting the culturally assigned ones. But then Kai’s older self was boring. Yes, yes, he’d heard the expression “non-conformists are all the same”, but personally Kai had never seen another one doing breaststroke amidst a sea of wind-swept people flowing around them. Just blowing. No direction. Poor people.
Tonight was yet another occasion for their antics. They wound down both windows so that the ridiculous lyrics could blare out. A stale cereal smell assaulted Kai’s nostrils. It was the brewery next door. Through their own music they could hear the bass thumping from inside the club, a primal call to all with ears to hear. Kai purposely stalled his car on the speed bump outside the club entrance, where the pretentious jocks ran rigid fingers through their monotonous hair. The boys’ laughter overpowered their song, and became it, as they resumed their parking mission.
“Yoh, check out those hotties!” JP said.
Their sugar high from ingesting Capetonian eye candy was setting in.
“Should we chug one of these now?” Kai suggested, holding up one of the Castle beer quarts they had bought at the Shebeen earlier. He was sure glad he had surmounted his previous paranoia about hitting that place, as the green bottle’s gleam beamed better adventure in his direction.
“Hell yeah Ou!” JP squawked.
The two bruvva’s guzzled the bubbles, shoved in some gum, and began their strut.
CHAPTER 3: ESTROGEN CRUSADE
Chapter 3.1: Estrogen Crusade - Intoxicated with Lust
Their strategy, pre-discussed and tried and tested, was to pretend not to notice any girls, all the while assessing which ones were watching them using their peripheral vision. Girls use this strategy all the time, and Kai joined the equality of the sexes bandwagon that had yet to fully permeate the old school Afrikaans-driven culture. One of the two of them would migrate in imperceptible increments towards the girls who bore promise of summer warmth. The whole process was infused with a kaleidoscopic, heart adrenaline blur that the alcohol produced and that emotion sustained.
The alcohol had blurred the lines of separation between people, making it less awkward to initiate conversations. A gorgeous brunette returned Kai’s migration towards her with a faint smile and a flick of the hair. A flick of the hair? There was only one thing that meant: he was in!
“Go for it my bru,” JP whispered. He must have seen her hair flick too.
But a dilemma had been flicked onto the scene too: if he commited to her by flirting now, that will dismiss all of his other options for the rest of the night. It was only 11pm - the night was but a puppy. I mean yeah, she seemed sweet. But Kai was holding out for a girl who was perfectly hot, and perfectly cool at the same time. Reasonable, right? He decided to postpone his advance until later in the night to see what other options surfaced.
‘Argh,’ Kai grunted to himself at 2am, all the while maintaining the external appearance of revelry. ‘That guy just came up to the only sweet-looking her and got all up in her face. Geez bru, he’s virtually forcing her to dance with him! I hate that approach, and I’ll never do it.’ The lack of intelligent game that Kai’s competitor used reeked of unclassiness, and Kai was surprised that girls would go for that. He’d rather go home alone!
As the night wound on, though, and each potential target of Kai and JP’s proceeded to get ransacked by barbaric Africans, going home alone seemed like an increasingly likely outcome. And one that’s prize of moral gloating was progressively diminishing in its satisfaction.
‘Ok I’ve still got time, let’s make this happen!’ Kai determined as his expectations switched gears. The switching process was one that he was all too familiar with, and that sometimes made him wonder whether there were two different entities living inside him. He would be much obliged to whichever one could land him a meisie right now.
JP had turned his attention toward two girls they had met a couple of weeks before who had emerged from the Wonderland known as the female restroom.
“Hey man, these chicks are decent, and there’s two of them, and two of us!” JP beamed as he presented his indisputable case. Kai loved his relentless enthusiasm.
“Two plus two equals score dude! They seem lank interested, and I need my dose of estrogen son!” Kai said with a smirk.
A flurry of flirtatious smiles, whiffs of perfume, and ‘accidental’ caresses landed them right where they wanted to be: back at the one girl’s apartment. Through fizzled distraction, Kai found a piece of happiness. For a moment, he didn’t want to be anywhere else.
…
A garbage truck inconsiderately awakened Kai from his open-mouthed slumber the next morning. As the room and vague memories from the night before came flooding back to him, it made the place he was in seem like a worthy candidate for the garbage truck to visit. He wanted to get out…immediately if possible. It’s not that she’s wasn’t cool or anything but he hated situations like that and he felt disgusting.
Like a dirty soldier from the trenches of a battle won, Kai and JP started a prompt and victorious exit before the carnage had a chance to catch up to them. While the girls slept in Disney slumber, their Prince Charmings crept to the door like black ninjas, feeling dark and guilty despite the ninja honor. Guess the girlies should’ve known better than to believe that life begins and ends in a Disney castle.
The dark feeling quickly evaporated with the flood of sunshine that welcomed them back to the waking world, as they navigated the unfamiliar corners back to Kai’s car.
“YES BRU!” JP blurted out when they were sure they were out of earshot of the girls’ place. He went into gory detail about what went down in the trenches, and told Kai without a hint of reservedness how he was in love and had found his dream girl. He triumphantly reached for his pocket to take out his phone and text her.
“Dude I’m stoked you dig her,” Kai held up his hand to interrupt JP’s attempt, “but you always do this. A little attention and you just jump into Casanova mode and chase the girl away with your over-eagerness. If you want her, my man, then take it easy. Let her miss you a bit. Girls are suckers for the dance, the imagination, filling the gaps with her own ideas about what she wants you to be.”
Kai knew that JP was grateful for the assertion of Kai’s guruhood, which he shared with their white buddy Psyche, when it came to psychology and the paradoxical mystery of what attracted Western women. Although JP was particularly attracted to white girls, as was prominent in his culture, the attraction in the opposite direction didn’t bear the same prominence. Colored girls and white girls operated differently, and the caresses of Kai’s previous conquests bore a silent consensus amongst the boys of his colonial cultural grasp.
“Ok cool bru, I’ll wait,” JP conceded. “What should I say when I do text her?”
“Make it something original, something she wouldn’t expect. And leave it a little open for interpretation. Like use some kinda whitty humor; a clever analogy or pun. And don’t be over-eager my bru.” Kai had a glimmer of semi-conscious worry that this approach was short-sighted in that it was more likely to make her fall for the kind of person Kai was rather than the puppy dog that JP was. But puppies were ill-equipped to handle the complexity of interactions of girls in the modern world. It’s not simple. Simple is lame, anyway. Opposites attract, but yet it is shared values that keep couples together. Women respect a sensitive guy and one who’s perfected the art of active listening, but they don’t want a door mat. JP’s African simplicity was noble yet dangerous in a world where survival of the fittest eliminates the ignorant first. Kai refused to be eliminated. And he refused to eliminate his reservoir of options by settling for a girl who was anything less than perfect. No, Kai had one life, and was intent on finding the perfect girl, the perfect social circle, career, and country.
“Sweet man, shot. Maybe you can help me with that. What you wanna do today?”
“I’ve gotta crash bru, I might go for a surf later.” Kai shut down the possibility of hanging out in one of his typical post-party hermit morphs. After nights like that he felt that he needed his time to digest it all and enjoy the introspective mood that hangovers left him with.
In his early 20’s hangovers always left him; and he always left the girls.
CHAPTER 3.2: Estrogen Crusade – One Choice Eliminates Millions
Kai’s evaporating hangover left room for him to try to knock out some university assignments.
He wasn’t sure what he want kind of career he wanted, or whether the concept of a career was outdated. With so many options of life paths to choose from, his generation felt like a deer frozen in the headlights of choice. In past generations, sons would do what their fathers did; daughters would aspire to marry. Boring. But Kai was in the process of learning that with much choice comes much room for regret.
Despite growing up poor, his lifelong infection of the travel bug had led him to overseas cash opportunities that made him the envy of his African brethren on his return. The UK had been his wallet’s ally. Since he left high school he had following the wind across England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales, working in live-in jobs, or whatever sustenance happened to blow his direction. ‘Commitment is for old people,’ Kai would tell himself assuredly. He’d do what he wanted, when he wanted. But what did he want? At the moment he was grumbling about his attempt to commit to a field of study. Psychology was more of an interest pursuit than a career hoop jump, but a lot of the time it seemed dry. He figured it would help him get girls, anyway.
“Schemas”, he begrudgingly read “are cognitive maps that help us encode, organize, and interpret reality.” ‘Ah I can’t concentrate properly. Why do I have to know about schemas and neurons and other people’s theories? Let’s see, what other modules do I have? “Kubler Ross’ stages of grief are denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.” Hmmm, I wonder what it would be like to go through that.’
He thought back to when his dad was found dangling from a rope that creaked under his weight as it twisted. In retrospect, Kai did recognize some of old Kubler Ross’ stages. Like he couldn’t believe that it was real. He was inconsolably angry at his dad for such a pathetic and weak decision. Acceptance huh? More like learning to live with it. The irreversibility of death stuck with him. But despite his brush with death during the mugging attempt, he felt pretty safely immune, although the mugging had made him more conscious of how little time he may have left in this life. Linkin Park’s track started on repeat in his mind:
“Time is a valuable thing, watch it clock by as the pendulum swings, watch it count down to the end of the day, the clock ticks life away, it’s so unreal.”
‘Ja, none of this seems too relevant to my life right now, I’m not amped for this at the moment to go into this. Alice was right: “How can one possibly pay attention to a book with no pictures in it?”’ He forcefully slammed the book shut in defiance of his syllabus and finger walked his way through his pile of text books looking for something that might be mildly amusing. “Philosophy 101”. ‘Plato, Descartes, Hegel. Who’s Hegel? He read:
“History has three phases. [It] moves from a condition of Primitive Monism to a Dualistic Split, only to make a third leap back to a kind of restored unity, but a unity which is on a higher level: a Differentiated Unity.”
The lecturer started likening this split to the teenage years, and the evolution of various religions, and history. ‘It’s history man, gone. Why do we go into such depth in this old-school philosophy when the world and our bodies are being made new every day? Teach me how to understand people, teach me how to understand reality!’ Kai was too distracted by a series of text exchanges between him and Sonya.
Sonya was a nice girl, a pure snowdrop. She had had a crush on Kai back in high school but he was too ladened with teenage over self-consciousness to capitalize on it. His shyness had prevented him from converting her crush into anything more than a written confession of his mutual affection in a letter he quickly slipped to her before recess ended. The opportunity itself quickly slipped into recess.
But after he came back from his first UK trip at 18 he had bumped into her at the mall. He allowed his new-found confidence to lay the charm back on her and strutted away with her phone number.
See traveling had allowed Kai to reinvent himself in each successive town, honing in closer and closer to the type of personality that was buried beneath layers of expectation that people who he’d grown up with had endowed upon his personality. Expectations have a way of becoming self-fulfilling prophecies, and Kai had seized the opportunity to prophesy a new way of being into his life. His growing charisma was beginning to manifest in outward evidence, the most recent of which were these beeps of his phone.
He loved these text conversations, saturated with innuendo and latent chemistry. He got an adrenaline surge each time his phone beeped and he consciously refused to choose dull text books over real life texting vigor. Menial, flirtatious chatter morphed into a concrete time and place to meet up. That, in turn, morphed into that time being upon Kai. And him being nervous.
He pulled into the beach parking lot where he had arranged to meet Sonya. The ramifications for the future of this relationship receded like ripples honing in on their point of origin – colliding in a seismic thump in his chest. Solemn echoes of his thoracic cavity drowned out the sound of the kids playing at the beach. The gnawing tug to return to his comfort zone awoke him to the importance he placed on Sonya. “Why? I’ve got plenty of other options,” he said aloud, searching within his psyche.
These questions were directed at Truth itself. Deep within his soul, a wiser voice was trying to emerge. This voice was subliminally present, but yet could never shout loud enough through the noise of his ego to allow it to be audible to his conscious mind. He was too complacent in his present life to allow this voice to run the risk of changing what he was in the process of setting up. He wanted answers to these questions, but he didn’t want those answers to push him out of his comfort zone.
Therefore, his conscious mind wouldn’t allow him to consider that the emphasis he was putting on Sonya was perhaps a form of self-redemption to make amends for his awkward teenage phase. Nor would it let him see that the consolation he found in having other options was a mask to hide him from the ego blow of failure. Since he was living in ego mode during this phase of life, if he lost that then who would he be?
All he knew was that a shot of tequila would really help right now. But he had tried that strategy another time, with this other girl, and their relationship had been wasted from there. It worked two nights ago at the club, though, and the taste of success was still in his mouth. That taste had been mingled with the evaporating tinge of intoxication, and Pavlov’s dog was learning to associate that intoxication tinge with happiness. Why was it so easy when he’s wasted? The wiser voice of the two within him had been trying to tell him that alcohol had become a source of pseudo confidence in his life that he couldn’t quite call his own. He had tried plenty of times to stop, but decided against it when the situation arose. You hear? Decided. It wasn’t in control; he was. Anyway, Kai didn’t have time for any of this now.
‘Time to get in the zone.’ He glanced at his watch and grimaced when he saw he had 4 minutes left. Trying to remain calm while searching for his favorite song, he fumbled with his headphones in an attempt to multitask. The familiar beats filled the emptiness of the situation, and soon energy started to rise.
As he exited the vacuum of his car, the strong South Easterly wind tugged at his hair in a malicious attempt to mess with his planning. He wanted it to look windswept, but at his discretion! He wanted to be swept away, but at his discretion.
Scurrying to get out of the wind, he spotted Sonya. His heart missed two beats as he turned to face her larger than life presence, and he couldn’t help but burst into a genuine smile. Their eager eyes met in a still-motioned freeze frame before rationality took over and caused their gazes to drop in an attempt to reduce the awkwardness as they made their way towards each other.
“Malakai!” Sonya sang. Her melodious voice and sexy pitch locked Kai’s mind in a repetition of his name. Even though his mother was the only one who called him Malakai, he liked it coming from her. Get back in your box, Freud.
Just like that it was upon him – the moment he had rehearsed in his mind innumerable times. And you know what? It wasn’t nearly as stressful as he had imagined! It was charming, in fact, magical. The sound of the children playing and waves crashing faded back in, and became nature’s symphonic approval of their searching gazes, pheromone-filled frolics, and soul-stirring laughs.
Kai’s thoughts marveled at her persona, and then at themselves. ‘Wow she’s stunning in that riveting red dress! She’s so sure of herself and where she wants to go in life. So serene. Geez dude, you’re into her! Careful.’ Their walk was never hampered by their arrival at the initially agreed upon destination, and Kai felt like he could walk the world with her.
Their conversation was unforced as they effortlessly played the preliminary rounds of the game that ultimately involved merging their plans and futures. It came in flashes – a gnawing urge to tell her exactly how he was feeling about her. But with no time delay at all, the rational voice would pull him back by reminding him of the consequences of doing that: a commitment to her would mean a dismissal of all his other options…forever. Kai loved options. He loved options more than he loved her. No, he would play it cool and engage with her cautiously and intentionally. Then he’d see what unfolded.
The moment never came for them to kiss, but Kai wasn’t too upset because he knew it was only a matter of time. They embraced for a goodbye in expectancy, pressing into each other in a tantalizing temptation of what was to come. Her essence mingled with her perfume to create a heavenly aromatic envelope that Kai never wanted to leave.
‘Wow, what a catch!’ he triumphantly said aloud as he began to think through his game plan of how to get her to bite hook, line, and sinker.
He rode the emotional highway all the way through the next few hours. Colors never seemed so bright, and music never seeming so relevant or amping. He couldn’t wait for their next encounter; he couldn’t wait to taste her, to take it further. But if he cared about this girl he needed to play the game right and keep her interested instead of pulling a JP and wearing his heart on his sleeve. He mustered all the self-discipline he could and refrained from texting her that day, instead consoling himself by reading and rereading all the texts they had ever sent to each other. “This girl is a keeper,” he mused.
Meanwhile, across town, Sonya was sharing the euphoria. She diarized her feelings in purple ink, cementing them for all time. Her calligraphy-like handwriting was a manifestation of her patience, passion, and commitment.
She checked her phone every 15 minutes.
Nothing.
Each time that she was dismissed callously by the blank screen, reality pushed the euphoria a little more back into its box. Sonya came from an old school South African upbringing. Girls are never to make the first move - that’s only for the slutty and desperate - and she cared too much about what Kai thought of her to risk sending that impression by texting him first. That evening dimmed her day, and as her phone screen remained dark, her mood shadowed. She subconsciously laid the bricks of her first wall of defense against Kai in an effort to dampen the growing feeling of rejection.
‘Why?’ she wondered, ‘I thought we had a great time. Maybe I should have talked less. I should have worn that white dress instead, I knew the red one made me look fat. He could have at least said goodnight.’ Anger fused with disappointment and then morphed into a version of apathy that numbed the pain like emotional dry ice. The coldness was directed at a particular face – Kai’s - and soon the earlier fireworks were silenced by the frigidity.
CHAPTER 4: SURFING
Chapter 4.1: Surfing - Salt Water’s Song
The next morning consciousness filled Kai’s nostrils with the smell of a vibrant future. Sunshine poured through his blinds bearing with it an invitation to join Cape Town in its perpetual adventure of existence. ‘Sonya,’ the thought sang to his mind.