I was fresh from graduation, exhausted by the endless goodbyes to old friends. But I was on my way to beginning what we are all told is reality, the crazy, you are finally an adult bit of your life. Even more absurd was the fact that I was turning twenty-one the very next day.
I lived in Cape Town, right after we were out of Varsity, planning to make it a home city. Meanwhile, I worked at a couple of restaurants perpetuating the sluggish varsity life, while hoping to stumble upon something to do with it. A week before I ventured back to receive my very own piece of paper that qualified me to tell other people what it was that was happening in the world, in other words I had managed to complete an honors in Journalism(the art of bull shit). My friend and I went out on a regular Thursday, danced our butts off to a killer set by our favorite drum n bass DJ. I do believe we were wasted. To add more to the debauchery there was an ever more amorous texture to the evening. He walked passed us the scent of him lingered behind. He smelled expensive and with a dose of arrogance. Then he quickly turned back and asked if we wanted to join him for a smoke.
My friend and I went back to the dance floor thinking nothing of it. This is how these things go in a place such as Cape Town. The last song was played and somehow us dancing fiends were ready to crawl back into our hives. We got into a cab with nothing but our beds in mind. At the traffic light there was a knock on the window, it was him asking for our numbers. We shouted our numbers to him. The green light went on and we went our separate ways. He called, I answered.
"Hey, remember me? I met you the other night."
This was me on my way back to Cape Town from the graduation. After several flirtatious messages, we decided to meet for a hot cup of coffee. My stupid bus was late so I had to move the morning coffee to another time. Mind you this was my twenty-first birthday and the day of my first real job interview. "If you don't mind, I'll pick you up at the bus station.",he asked and I agreed. He picked me up and took me to the other side of Cape Town where my job interview was. Please do note that I had no idea where the hell this place was, so he saved my ass. We finally sat down to that hot cup and he told me he was allergic to strawberries. As though strangers should share this kind of information?
The interview went well and he skipped lectures to lie with me on the wooden floors of a house shared with four other girls. A couple of days later, I found out I got the job and Friedrich and I started seeing each other for another month or two and we were basically inseparable. One day, on my way to work I phoned him knowing very well that he was an early riser. He didn't pick up. He phoned me after a while saying he needed to talk me, everyone who is sane knows that they don't want to hear those words. My gut feeling was something is wrong. A couple of hours later he showed up to my house so high and late. His face agonized by to much puffing telling me, "I can't do this anymore..You are too clingy." I was seeing red, 'who the fuck does this little worm think he is. He's the one calling, making plans, asking me to come over.' I was heartbroken and passive aggressive. I just told him to do what he feels is right, hoping like we all do that he'd realize that I was a great person and change his mind.
Apparently this was his MO (modus operandi), he dates similar looking girls, he beds them( and he is really good at this one), and destroys them at the end telling them that they are the problem. In other words a walking confidence buster and worst of all he was a Gender Studies Major. It was see-saw for about a year. This is the part where our mothers should have told us that there is a huge difference between love and sex. This is how it started raining in my life.
