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 fumble-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 find 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

Alternative Night

Alternative night was Tuesdays at the Vic, what passes for a nightclub in Grahamstown, though none of the clubs I’ve seen since would want the Vic dating their daughter.

Juggling Mix Tapes
We played everything from blistering hardcore punk to waving, shoe-gazing indie. Most of the music was only available on swapped tapes. This made cueing and mixing songs a plate-spinning nightmare.

The night drew a motley crowd of cliques, from Goths, Metalheads and indie kids, each with their own favourite songs, and idiosyncratic dances. Indie kids tried to look cool, head-bangers moshed in packs. Only the metalheads and punks danced like no one was watching.

Whiskey in the Jar. Only Not.
As all the denizens went in varieties of narcotic malaise, alcohol took a back seat. Kenny (Satan, Saddam Hussein horrible owner of the Vic) would complain “We sold four beers and given out over 200 glasses of water! What the fuck?"

The Rotters

“Let’s get wrrrrecked!” was the call to arms of Craig and Errol, two ropey, atrociously alcoholic felons who terrorised the African street lentilheads’ digs. If the Zimbos made your mother cry, the rotters would send her into a sobbing nervous breakdown. In two years, I never saw either of them without a drink (theirs or someone else’s). Their ethos can perhaps be best summed up in one of Craig’s favourite songs, which he sang to me on the African street roof, one wrrrecked afternoon:

“There's sweat on my finger tips

I got a belly full of beer shits

My head is too close to the wall.

There's blood in my underwear

I don't know how I got it there

I swear I'd bust open my head, should I fall.”

- The Wonder Stuff, A Great Drinker (1993)

Salad Valley Bush-dive

They were breath-takingly, brutally rude bastards to anyone unfortunate enough to be in their path. I myself paid a local thug R50 to beat them up the first night I met them. They’d made some eye-wateringly disparaging remarks about me in front of my new girlfriend’s father. Sadly, my designated assassin got drunk on the 50 rondt at the Spur, and bush-dived the salad bar before he was arrested. The rotters were left untouched, and instead drank themselves to unconsciousness on the African street lounge floor, blissfully ignorant of their intended violent fate. I never did get a refund.

Fish and Chips Bush-dive

The rotters were scarred with countless drinking injuries, constantly falling off, over, and into things. Craig got 20 stitches after falling on his prized new bottle of whiskey. All the way to the hospital he sobbed for his loved - and tragically lost - bottle. Then there’s the time he went down the rock slide at Mermaid Pools on his face. How we laughed. Errol passed out face-first in his fish and chips at a family meal. How his dad didn’t laugh.

Re-tox Parties

The rotters were ever trying – and failing – to give up the grog. A few days of sobriety were always rewarded with riotous re-tox parties that punished them and their livers like a roaring,  brandy-fuelled Volkswagen Beetle crashing into a wall of burning rubbbish bins. These parties lasted for days, with the rotters taking turns for one to pass out while the other drank on, like a wrestling tag team.

The Glass of Water Pick-Up Line

Despite constantly reeking of cheap booze, and dirty unwashed hair that looked like rats had been fucking in it, Craig was remarkably successful with women, in those rare moments he wasn’t drooling, passed out and without the rudimentaries of bladder control. He invented the glass of water gambit, a girl-meets-boy master stroke by this Cola Cane Casanova, and a legend to this day. 

Despite bulbous, manic eyes the size of tennis balls, a wide, leering mouth, and a Mr. Spock haircut, Errol pulled Shannon- so well done there.

What’s the Frequency Gwyneth? The Rotter Lexicon

Grog fever – What the drink-starved rotters would fall into thrall to after several hours without alcohol. Symptoms including screaming, cursing at all bystanders and recently previous friends, and downing whatever or whoever's drink was at hand.

Kickin’ it live – The boisterous, hopeful, pre-falling down phase. Just after Grog Fever, and before Showing them.

Showing them – Guzzling drink and drugs at a sprint, where more timid souls would fear to tread. Going out and getting “so drunk you’ll chunder on a bitch’s tits” (actual quote).

Cola Cane – The floor-sweepings of the Zimbabwean alcohol industry. Seven dollars got you a bottle of this violent blend of spirits and wine.

Pouncemania – Rotter feelings toward a winsome member of the fairer sex. Eg. “Fuck me! Shannon’s pounce-mania!”

A Big Fat Lezza - Any woman who's not pouncemania, or who rejects your advances.