Cramming Flashbacks

17 years on, I still get the same nightmare. After months of Work Avoidance Behaviour*, it’s two weeks til finals. How do you read 12 English set works in that time? Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse is just a slip of a book, but Faulkner’s heavyweight Sound and the Fury will make you feel like a drooling Faulknerian man-child after 10 pages.

Cramming dreams still wake me in a cold sweat, scrabbling for the valium. I wake bolt upright, my brain screaming, “Fuck! Get studying! Find someone’s note’s to photocopy! Do you still have your DP?” The stress of those last feverish days reaches back all the way from 1993- the days before email, cellphones, iPods, and the rigours of adulthood.

*Drinking, convalescing from Vic nights, spading, smoking joints on the roof, encounters with the local constabulary, stay in bed four day John and Yoko-style love-ins, trying to learn bass guitar in order to pull girls, making mix tapes, Kaif-crawling marathons, skipping lectures to go to Shelly’s Cove, electrical experiments, and dabbling in the Periodic Table of the Elements.

Kill Me Something!

A cold winter night at 67a African street. All of us stoned into the bejesus belt, lying on the couches like melting Dali clocks. The face of G, my vegetarian girlfriend at the time, swam into my vision, as I slumped on the couch like a slow-blinking, cap-sized tortoise.

Vegan Meat Rage

“Fuck this vegetarian shit!” she shouted, grabbing my t-shirt in her fists,” I’m SICK of lentils! I want you, as my man, to go out there and KILL me something! ”

Lady Macbeth gets the Munchies

An English 2 student, she then got all Lady Macbeth on my ass, going to greater, more hysterical entreaties; “Lo, would I snatch the suckling child from my breast, and dash its brains upon a rock!” she moaned, releasing her grip on my throat, and collapsed next to me.

Pigeon Bludgeoning for Beginners

Shuffling of the couch, like Frankenstein’s monster wading through molasses, I peered out the kitchen door. My only option seemed shinning up the nearby telephone pole and bludgeoning a tasty, plump-breasted pigeon atop it with a brick. Naaah. I slunk back into the lounge. Lady Macbeth glowered at me. Banished from the bedroom, I slept alone on the couch that night, shivering under a kikoi, with only a bong for company.

Drug Bust

"Do you remember that night in our digs on Wotsit Street near the Graham, when Dave (AKA Fat Irish) was still living with us? Well Ed had just come back from the Ciskei with, like, a proper, proper haul of weed. None of this half-assed couple of bankies business. A couple of black bin bags in a car boot.

And yea there was much celebration, and making of ceremonial bongs and Boomerang (elegant vodka-lemon-in-a-bucket concoction), and calling of friends to share the bounty. Nesh got naked; Adam got vomitty; Stark got thrown out. Sara and Lisa got high, an annual event; Danny 'M-Net' Scotsman got babooned (M-Net because with a Scottish accent and a prediliction for drink, after 7pm you needed a decoder to understand him.)

As a result, at 3am when there was a heart-stopping hammering of iron fist on digs door, we were mostly passed out and scattered far and wide through the digs, as was the weed. There was some in every room and everyone. But panic only spread truly through the ranks when Adam came belting through the house naked but for his tighty whities, wide-eyed and white-faced, banging on bedroom doors and whisper-shouting 'Pigs! Pigs! This is not a drill!"

I looked out over the balcony and I have never seen anything like it: ranks of Boere cops in riot gear and shotguns. Not one but TWO of those blerrie scary big yellow monster armoured vehicles - what were they called? Alsations on chains. High-octane torches. Guttural shouting and crackle of radios. Jissus. It's one thing having the cops knocking at your door; it's quite another having the full Soweto riot patrol.

Cue flat panic as we tried to rid ourselves of this monster haul of weed. David attempted to chuck a whole plastic bag full over the balcony onto the street, towards the cops (verily raining drugs down upon them) and then was rendered useless for the rest of the night by his horror at the thought of this near miss. We flushed and flushed. Ed - cool-headed in a time of chaos - was methodically chucking baggies into the back garden of the Graham, in the hope we could fetch it tomorrow. I was frantically flicking through Shakespeare - I had stashed my stash in something Shakespearian but as an English major, it was taking me some time to work out which play. Comedy? Tragedy?

It was a full half hour later that, terrified but standing firm and shoulder to shoulder, we finally answered the door to the torch-wielding, helmetted, flak-jacketted cops.

Lead cop: Does Dylan May live here?
Dylan (white and shaky, ready to bolt): Yes.
Lead cop: Mr May, can I ask you to identify this?
(Flourishes grayish rag in the air.)
Dylan (bemused and traumatised): Um, yes, those are my underpants.
Lead cop: And you recently reported a robbery at this address?
Dylan: Um, yes.
Lead cop: Did you sew this name tag in your underpants?
Dylan: Um, no, my Mom did.
Us, cops: Snigger.
Lead cop: Well, good for her, because we've been on a stolen goods raid in Rhini and we need you to provide evidence. Thanks for your time. Goodnight.

Sjoe."

Reunions

“Martin Q. Blank: Did you go to your reunion?

..Marcella: Yes, I did. It was just as if everyone had swelled.”

- Grosse Point Blank (1997)

Insurance Seminars

Official Rhodes Reunions are as much fun as partying with your Dad. I’ve been to one. Only once, and never again. It was fun like an insurance seminar. None of the interesting people I’d really want to catch up wouldn’t be seen dead at a Rhodes-sponsored reunion anyway.

Laugh ‘til Beer Squirts Out Your Nose

As a rule, I usually hand-pick who I want to see, and meet them in a cosy bar in London, or at a skanky Jo’burg pub. Some old friends’ company has no shelf life. Conversation's easy like an old well-worn mix tape, where you both know what song’s coming next. In a heartbeat you’re finishing each other’s sentences, swapping obscure jokes and giggling at them like school kids passing notes under the desk in the in class. Those are nights are glorious fun, we always laugh ‘til we cry, and our stomachs hurt. Seeing the cherished old friends that helped shaped the sum of your soul is gloriously life affirming.

Exes That Haven’t Got Fat

Some exes should not be seen nor heard, particularly if they dumped me, and haven’t got fat. In an ideal world, those ones will be bigger than my postcode, with jowels and thick ankles. In an ideal world, I’d just walk up and say;’ Wow. It’s been ages. What have you been doing all this time... APART FROM EATING?!’ Seeing the old girlfriends that spurned you, and are now fat, is gloriously life affirming.

The Ones That Got Away...

... Are the ones you’ll never forget. I guess once a relationship starts, on some plane it never ends. It just carries on. Maybe you got married, maybe you broke up earlier than you did, maybe you shagged her sister. Whatever. Somewhere someplace else, those feelings never stop, they keep just going on an on, like a million flickering TV shows bouncing off the satellites, beaming into space.

Taking Stock

Reunions bring on a heady mix a nostalgia and introspection. Some good, some bad. Whatever you do, don't congratulate yourself too much, or berate yourself either. Your choices have been half chance. So have everyone else's. We all muddle through somehow.

Amid the rigours of adulthood; the small work triumphs, shallower new friendships, and sane, pragmatic relationships of now hold up like a faded photocopy compared to those bright, shining times, idealised in recollection. Rhodes was heaven and hell, but sometimes I brood, and wonder if I was at my best in those years, with you people, in that place.

A Lack of Consequences

“Youth is a fever, the sleep of reason.”

- My Gran, in a letter to me at Rhodes (1991)

Rhodes was a bubble, perfect for unfettered feats of youthful folly.

Drugs

Rat had a bee in his bonnet about becoming Jesus. So, he locked himself in a blacked out room for two days, with a litre of water, and three Golden Buddhas, a potent brand of lysergic acid diethylamide that peeled your head like an orange and vomited the Encyclopaedia Britannica into your skull. Half of one would have Marilyn Manson convinced he was The Man From Galilee. Rat emerged unshaven, a bit thinner, and with a distinct lack of Christ-like superpowers. I believe he’s a barrister in London now. I somehow don’t see a “Previously Jesus” post script on the brass plaque on his law office door.

Drunk Driving

We all did it, at one time or another. Thing was, the average drive was no more than three km, and Grahamstown’s narrow, sleepy streets seemed to guide you, snug as a marble run. True drunk drivers could never really go faster than about 60 km/h. The stoners drove freaked out slow as a 45rpm record at 33.

Duelling

In 67 African street, disputes between gentlemen were settled with a duel. The combatants would stand back-to-back, the weapons of choice a Black Label quart and a spatula. At a signal from their seconds, each would walk ten paces apart, turn round, flick the lid off the quart with a deft flick of the spatula, and down the beer. Last one to finish lost the duel, and had to down a mug of Buddie’s Liquor Store No-name Brand Tequila™.

Duly Performed

The Duly Performed Certificate (DP) was as anathema to a tardy scholar as soap to an art student . Skip too many lectures, and you’d lose your DP. No DP meant you couldn’t write exams, you'd fail, and your parents would kill you and bury you in an unmarked grave.

Intervarsity

A sanctioned festival of sport and unbridled, foaming madness, intervarsity was a three day journey into the heart of darkness. The sporting events were a mere sideshow to Rhodes, Maritzburg, and UPE students all trying to outdo each other in drunken feats of excess. All of them did things that’d make a maggot gag, and have a Zimbo cowering under his duvet.

 

Great Field Bakkie Slalom 

Intervarsity morning. The Vice Chancellor was having breakfast with some UPE big knobs on his balcony above the Union. The polite clink of cutlery on plates was rudely disturbed by a god-awful ruckus broke . The dignitaries peered over the balcony to see a mud-spattered bakkie doing donuts on the Great Field below them. Not only that; Hay-sus de Costa was hanging on to the tow hitch, being dragged over the grass on his stomach, bawling in drunken excitement, and dressed only in a hessian sack. The VC’s eyes narrowed. “Bring me that boy” he said.

Spare the Rod and Spoil the Student

Ms Verwey, our art lecturer, was built like a dubiously gendered brick shithouse, part big-boned KGB buffalo dyke, part Afrikaans Maggie Thatcher. She was not to be trifled with. After our appalling second-year June exam results, she petitioned the VC to allow her to cane the “bloody lot” of us, “like we did in the ‘40s”.  Her request was denied, so she vented her rage by screaming, kicking furniture about, and throwing the overhead projector round the lecture hall (this is true), while we watched in shocked, ashen silence.

During a calmer lecture about Post-Renaissance Rococo influence on the Pre-Raphaelites, our fine art lecture hall was besieged by a rambunctious intervarsity party of rowdy Hunter’s Gold-crazed Maritzburg varsity students, banging on the door and shouting obscenities. Verwey opened the door and walked off stage left. We heard a withering outburst, a pained Natal-accented yelp, then a terrible silence.  Verwey walked back in, dusted off her hands, and calmly carried on the lecture.

From What I Do Remember

Due to an obscene amount of beer chased with First Watch whiskey, I remember only snatches of  intervarsity weekends: Zimbos helicopter vomiting on the Kaif lawns; Stumbling through crunching foot-deep snowdrifts of empty beer cans;  waking up in the rose gardens, festooned with my- or several others’- vomit; A stray pig with “UPE” daubed on it wandering  into the rugby game, and as one the crowd of men and women UPE students rushing off the stands onto the Great Field to chase it, trampling the hessian sack-clad Hay-sus and Steve Patterson, who’d been heckling them from the touch line.

We all did some pretty depraved shit, but like Vegas; what happened in intervarsity stayed in intervarsity.

Sex

I don’t have a hard-on at this moment, but at 18 I’d get one just brushing my teeth, folding my laundry, or most embarrassingly, during a crowded Dickens tutorial. Closing my eyes and thinking of Andrew Lloyd Webber usually sent it packing. The mere thought of sex drove me up the wall most waking moments in those years.

Multi-tasking
Frantically snogging like a bulldog eating porridge, stroking her hair with one hand, and feverishly trying (and failing) to unclasp the blasted bra with the other would have me weeping with frustration. I felt like an orangutan trying to play the violin.

The Bra is Your Enemy
Bra un-knotting was a proficiency badge they really should have had in Scouts when I was 15. After the the bra, dungarees were a sexual Gordian knot. Trying to peel off their rape-proof layers and countless buttons off Ilsa was like trying to ravish an onion. Laboriously un-lacing Doc Marten eight-ups was also almost as much of a passion-killer as feverishly trying to put on a condom.

i like my body when it is with your body
Undressing a girl for the first time, with trembling hands felt breathlessly sexy, scary, and heart thumpingly exhilarating as motorcycle speed. Seeing someone naked struck me dumb with wonder and tear-brimming gratitude.

"i like my body when it is with your
body. It is so quite new a thing.
Muscles better and nerves more.
i like your body. i like what it does,
i like its hows. i like to feel the spine
of your body and its bones, and the trembling
-firm-smooth ness and which i will
again and again and again
kiss, i like kissing this and that of you,
i like, slowly stroking the, shocking fuzz
of your electric fur, and what-is-it comes
over parting flesh . . . . And eyes big love-crumbs,

and possibly i like the thrill

of under me you so quite new"
- e.e. cummings

Things that Go Hump in the Night
Her: “If you love me you’ll wait”.
Me: “If you love me you won’t! Anyway, it isn’t premarital sex if we have no intention of getting married.”

[censored]

“Sex is like kicking Death in the arse while singing.”
- Charles Bukowski

Pillow Talk
I was never much good at pillow talk. I usually ended sex with a slap on her buttock and saying "Well done! Now back to the village with you!” This met with mixed responses.

Pregnancy Scares
In the early ‘90s, AIDS too abstract a threat for us white-bread middle-class types. The thought of telling your and her parents that she was knocked up was teeth-grinding-insomnia-stare-at-the-ceiling-all-night terrifying. In a particularly hot and bothered moment, Nadja said “Whoah! Isn’t this how you get pregnant?" I sighed, rolled off her, stared at the ceiling, and with a flash of inspiration, replied “Hey! Your mouth can’t get pregnant.”