Mienkie was my relationship counsellor. Her advice to me was: “Tell him you’re sick of him – and that’s it.” And the relationship was over.
Then there was the boy who sent me green Super M milkshakes at break time. It was cool and everything, but again the lack of communication bothered me. At least the Super Ms were a better deal than the silly satin hearts. I liked his practical approach.
On Sundays we went to church, attended confirmation class, read the newspapers and braaied, as most suburban Afrikaner families did (and still do).
I slowly came into my own in high school. It was the eighties. Against the background of the state of emergency and the last convulsions of the bush war, everything was about politics. My parents were actively involved in politics, the Vrye Weekblad was launched, and there were a number of integration groups at school to expose us to black children.
Because I didn’t do sport, I joined political and cultural organisations at school. Grade eight was a very unhappy year for me. I was madly in love with a boy with punk hair and bad-ass mates. They were probably in grade eight for the third year running. Their voices had already broken. They were stupid, but sexy – simply because they were older and hornier than the rest of us. My heart was broken when The Punk announced that he and his family were moving to Cape Town.
My sturm und drang also resulted in my running away from home. I believed my mom was pushing me too hard academically and, to top it all, she dared think The Punk was a waste of time. I felt very hurt that she didn’t want to take my love for him seriously.
The entire school found out I ran away because I – wait for it – ran away to school.
Don’t laugh. It was heavy.
I didn’t go home that afternoon after school as usual. I decided to stay at school because there was a dance that night at which I could see The Punk. My parents were out of their minds with worry. I hid in the school cloakrooms. The head girl tried to convince me to go home. I was in a state. I felt my life was a dead-end street. The Punk was nearly on his way to the Cape and my mother was planning to ground me because, according to her, I wasn’t doing well enough academically. My life had no meaning.
A while before this, a matric guy had stopped me in the hallway, told me I was ugly and had a good laugh about it. Ha-ha-ha. I wore glasses and was terribly self-conscious about them. The Punk was the only person on this planet who thought I was beautiful. He told me so. I believed him. And now I was being kept away from him on the eve of his departure to the Cape. And why? Because I had to study. Well, fuck you all!
My father fetched me from the cloakroom. He put his arm around my shoulder, led me to our car and said, “I’m disappointed in you.”
We drove home in silence.
When I walked in the door, I thought my mother would be pleased to see me. I thought she would understand and stop putting me under so much pressure to do well academically. Instead she said she never wanted to see me again. Naturally she was emotionally drained and simply wanted to be a good parent, but I was devastated.
The rest of grade eight was dead boring. Grade nine too. At least I eventually discovered another source of excitement. My sister went out with a terribly intelligent guy and I was madly in love with him from the start. She said he would be our country’s president one day. His name was Chrissie. Chrissie Mulder. He later became Chris Chameleon and made very nice records, as he calls them.
Somehow I clung onto Chrissie’s existence throughout my entire high school career. For three years I watched him, until he left school. His movements and interests fascinated me. And gave me hope. He was also “different” and I could see how he struggled with it. I wasn’t the only one who didn’t fit in with the rest of the kids, who were only interested in netball and rugby.
I was a nerd with a free spirit. And so was Chrissie. There was no place for kids like us in our school. Every time he even looked in my direction or spoke to me, I would stammer and blush. I didn’t know how to talk to such a clever, sexy guy. I had wet dreams about him.
Even when he had finished school and I had another two years left, I thought only of him. I never went out with anyone in school again. My mother wouldn’t let me anyway, because I had to study. There was no time to become boy mad, as she put it. My obsession with Chrissie Mulder filled my heart and high school years; his whereabouts and actions were motivation enough to get up and carry on. Every day.
In time, I didn’t know how I would ever achieve anything like a normal relationship with a man, or have sex with one. I was so painfully shy! One day I scraped together enough courage to ask my biology teacher if a man’s penis looked like a dog’s. I had once seen a dog’s stiff pink polony and nearly cringed myself to death.
“Yes, Karin,” she answered without turning a hair.
Eeeeeeuuuw …
I decided there and then I would rather never have sex if that’s what a penis looked like.
In my final year at school I was supposed to be confirmed in the Dutch Reformed Church, but I was not entirely sure of my religious convictions. Our minister and I did not share the same world view, shall we say. I once mentioned the word “evolution” in confirmation class and was told: “I see trouble for you if you harbour such ideas.”
We had to memorise the Heidelberg Catechism without understanding what it meant, and we had to declare before the entire congregation that Jesus Christ was our only Lord and Saviour.
But I did not believe it.
I didn’t know precisely what I believed, but I was convinced the god I believed in was neither as stupid nor as narrow-minded as the church’s great master minds.
A world of differences lay between us …
One afternoon after school, as I sat reading the newspaper at our dining-room table, everything just became too much for me. On the front page was a photo of a black man impaled with a spear during the township riots. The thing was protruding from both sides of his body. I burst into tears and my mother rushed closer, thinking I was crying about the picture, but I was crying because I had to stand up and lie in front of a church full of people that coming Sunday. In a prissy little cream suit. At least it would be with stockings. (Hallelujah.)
It was too late to back out, because Granddad and Grandma would be coming afterwards for tea and cake. The announcement of a total about-turn in my religious convictions and state of mind would not go down well with them.
Go through with it, my child, you won’t regret it. Mommy’s proud of you.
So I stood there and lied.
And stopped going to church after that.
Deep down I was still a prissy little girl who did her homework obediently every day and had good manners and who was so bashful around members of the male sex that my cheeks started to quiver when I had to talk to them.
Ag shame, sister.
By this time you’re probably wondering how the hell I surrendered myself to the sex industry for more than six years.
Because I could. I wanted to.
I cannot put it any other way.
Because I learned to be brave (or is that perhaps dumb?) enough to find my own answers.
Because I wanted to see for myself what goes on in the darker side of suburbia; what happens when the lights are off.
And what you fall into when you step over the precipice and tumble into the dark abyss.
I knew light was always part of the darkness, and darkness always part of the light. And I knew there was no such thing as only one truth.
I always knew I could come back again, even if I had changed along the way. I didn’t want to become a fifty-year-old suburban housewife or career-driven businesswoman who is married for decades