A Short Story - Falling

He was the kind who hung around the walls, leaning against a doorjamb here and there, skirting the edges of the room with an intent look in his eyes. I had been watching him as he nursed a glass with a splash of amber liquid; it pleased me that he did not add anything to his hard liquor. I had witnessed too many men lurching towards my bathroom with their glasses of rum and cola held precariously aloft. I shudder to think what the bathroom will be like at the end of this party.

Back to Broody over there by the kitchen door; why did he keep moving along the wall? He wasn't taking to anyone. He seemed to be trying to catch the attention of a flamboyantly-dressed gyrating guest on the dance floor. Ah, so he was KB’s friend. KB was metrosexual to excruciating heights. He took fashion advice from gay guys and carried a manbag. He was also my best friend in the world but picked up these random friends with startling regularity. I would schedule a lunch date with him, burning to talk to someone about whatever strife befell a 30-something-year-old and he would have invited someone along. All his friends had names that ended with exclamation marks; you know, Todd! Andrew! Siya! Lisa! It was quite exhausting to keep up with the strays he collected.

So if Broody (!) was his one of his rescues, it would be better to lose interest in him right now. Except now he has caught me staring at him. Oh dear, my grandmother was renowned for her ‘eyes met across a crowded room’ stories. Every man she ever fell in love with (before and after grandpa) she had fallen in love with his eyes across a crowded room. That first exchange of looks with Broody (!) was enough to convince me to believe one of my grandmother’s stories. He might as well have reached out and grabbed me by my hand and pulled me to him. Before the thought could register I was sashaying across the crowded room, sucking my tummy in and daring him to look away from me while I was headed for him. He didn't relinquish our look; his facial expression didn't change as he calmly waited for me to reach him.

“Excuse me,” I moved around him and disappeared into the kitchen.

Well, obviously I’m not the sex bomb I thought myself a minute ago. I was sure I was going to go up to him and say something inane like, “it’s rude to stare you know”. In the twenty or so steps it took to reach him, I had concocted the entire conversation we were to have in my head. I would be witty and funny and he would be suave and mysterious. On the last step I decided it would be better if that conversation stayed in my head.

“Shit, shit, shit!” I muttered as I busied myself with opening another bottle of red wine, which thankfully, was really running low on the drinks table.

“I’ll open that for you if you’re having trouble,” said an incredibly sexy voice behind me.

I turned around and there was Broody (!) leaning on the kitchen counter. Maybe he had a balance problem that compels him to lean?  Gently easing the cork out of the bottle I smiled my hostess smile; “Thanks, I’ve got it.”

“So you’re the hostess?”

“Yes, I’m Angela,” I extended my hand.

“Pleased to meet you, I’m Steven” (!)?  He had a rather perfunctory handshake.

“You came with KB right?” I already knew the answer to that. I’m an idiot, and my dress is ugly, and I’m painfully single.

“Yeah, thanks for having me despite the lack of invite; KB tends to drag people everywhere without much thought of whether or not he ought to” he said, reaching out for all the world like it was his house and plucking a wine glass somewhere above my head. I giggle nervously because I probably knew KB better than him and didn’t want to confirm that he was indeed a spare.

“I noticed earlier that you were drinking the red, so may I pour you a glass?”

When had he noticed? Had I been laughing too loudly at the time? Oh God! “No that’s alright, I’ve moved on to water, I monitor my alcohol intake very strictly,” I said somewhat severely.

He blinked and focused a surveying look on my ample curves. Oh fantastic, he is probably thinking ‘rightly so’. It was time to put a stop to this entire botched flirtation. Steven (he didn’t sound like he pronounced his name with an exclamation mark) was an attractive, sexy-voiced man and I was way out of my depth. Witty was absent and funny had left the building; time to return to hostess mode.

“”Let me take this bottle out to the party, I hope you have a good night, let me know if you need anything,” I flashed a vague smile and left him.

********************************************

“Great party as always angel,” boomed KB as he made for the door, the last person to leave. At least he had the decency to help me stack the dirty glasses in their crates and perfume some rudimentary cleanup before leaving.

“What happened to Steven, I thought he came with you?” I asked, trying to sound casual.

“HOHO!” he pounced. As I had been afraid he would.

“Got a little crush have we? Forget it sweetie, he’s so boring I had to beg him to come to this party. Workaholic. Anyway, we came in separate cars,” he blew me a kiss and shut the door.

Great, a boring workaholic is just what I had hoped he would be. Actually, I didn’t mind a sedate guy, KB had cured me of party boys when we were in our 20s and I would see him devastate girl after girl. And a man who worked hard indicated that he was dedicated, focussed. Thinking I had built Steven up way too much in my imagination, I began the mammoth task of cleaning up after 30-plus heavily drinking people. It took an hour and a half before I was finished. A quick shower and I was ready for bed;  on a trip to get some water from the fridge I went rigid.

Stuck on the day planner was a pink Post It from my own supply.

“I’d love to hear from you tomorrow, Steve.” His email and cell number were written in uppercase.

On lies and blindness

I recently broke my spectacles.  Actually, what is the proper name for those? There are “glasses” and then there are “spectacles.”  Whichever, I no longer have the things I used to see with. There is a concept in the physiology of sight that is called “dark adaptation”. This refers to the temporary blindness you experience when you move from bright light, to dim light. Basically, your eyes malfunction for a bit, rendering you blind.

When someone lies to you, they temporarily blind you. For a few precious seconds (well the effects of lies last longer than seconds) you are rendered blind. So, a mortal danger could happen in those seconds and you would be none the wiser.

When someone lies to you, they place you in danger, danger of the effects of their lies. While they bask in the success of their dishonesty, you are at the mercy of the path they now have to lead you down, in order to prevent their lies from discovery.

So if there is fate, is it your fate to fall for lies? Let’s say  no, let’s say that Fate did not factor in that people would lie, because lie goes against the basic instincts of most decent people, so if you fall for a lie, you are no longer following your Fate. You are just the puppet in the machinations on some liar.

Most of the time, these liars are not thinking ahead. They have to think on their feet, often adjusting lies to suit whichever path you seem to be likely to take which will lead to your discovering the light. And so you remain their sightless puppet.

I want to know when it stops.

When does a person decide, ok, my lies are hurting this person, I want to stop. And when they stop, is that an act of honesty for you, or simply tiredness of keeping track of all their lines?

And what happens when you discover the lies on your own?

These are the dumb questions that occupy my mind.

PS: I really hate not wearing my glasses.

PPS: Pardon typos

Tortured Metaphors and Faith

A rather large tear has ruined my beautiful quilt. Jagged and uncompromising, it offers a window to the turmoil beneath.

Do I unstitch the whole square or do I just darn the hole?

Life is not meant to be smooth sailing, there are currents and rapids to endure; as I go through those right now I haven take pause to wonder whether or not I am handling it correctly.

I have friends who have blind faith; faith in God or faith in other beliefs. As the maelstroms of life toss those friends about, I see them clinging on to their faith; even through pained eyes they are steadfast; “everything happens for a reason” or “it is God’s will”.

Whether or not it is through that faith that I see them at a later stage, in calmer waters, buoyed through the storm remains a mystery to me. But I know they believe that God saw them through.

At my end, I spend my time painstakingly stitching the tears together, mindful that what once was a beautiful flat surface is now marred by evidence that something ugly traversed through its very fabric, seeking to undo the threads that hold it together. Each stitch is a reminder of what has passed and testament to my endurance. Some stitches are painful to gaze upon.

So, would it not be better if I too believed in a God of miracles? A God who would toss me in the fire, them pull me out, stronger than before? Or am I safe in rolling up my sleeves and doing damage control myself?

A Criminal Encounter

When there is an itch, scratch it. That is the driving force behind two blog posts in as many days; that and the fact that I have a few days off work. Yesterday’s blog was a departure from the usual drivel I try to limit myself to and nigh incomprehensible as one Anonymous so charmingly pointed out. So allow me to go back to the usual in this post.

Two weeks ago my mother asked me to look in on two boys who had been admitted at the hospital I work. When I got to the ward both boys (17 and 19) were being guarded by the police. One had a huge gash on his face and said he had been in a car crash. The other had several gunshot wounds. Seeing as my mother is rarely in the company of criminals I assumed the kids were the victims, hence the police guard. They are the sons of a friend of my mom's.

It is only recently that I got the full story. The boys, in the company of a parolee had been part of a hijacking gone horribly wrong. They had ambushed a man in a parking lot and the 19-year-old had shot him. While the man was writhing on the ground, the 16-year-old had driven over him, leaving him dead on the tarmac. The parolee, a man who is in his 40s, scuppered leaving the boys to fend for themselves. They were caught by the police in about 30 minutes and the resultant shootout had seen the 16-year-old lose control of the car and the 19-year-old shot by police.

I had gone out of my way to be pleasant to people who had done something so despicable. I had touched their shoulders reassuringly and promised them they were being taken care of. I had looked into the eyes of two criminals and treated them with common courtesy and decency. I hadn’t seen what they were.

I’m fucking pissed with myself.

Misunderstood Single Me

The lot of the 21^st century single woman is to suffer being misunderstood. Or rather, more candidly, it is to wallow in the belief that she is greatly misunderstood. Decades after the Suffragettes began their march towards unleashing the modern woman on the unsuspecting male-dominated world of the early 20^th century women are still struggling with self-identity and coming to terms with the perceived identity ascribed to them by male counterparts and often their own families.

The month of August in South Africa offers much room for reflection about what it means to be a woman and what I can expect of myself as a woman. As a month dedicated to the celebration of women and the commemoration of an historic event then country, I feel it fit that I acknowledge something I feel is now taboo and not in keeping with what is in vogue in terms of celebrating women’s right; the right to be an old-fashioned kind of woman.

Perhaps my impatience with today’s woe-is-successful-young-me woman is the seeming betrayal of the sacrifices that have been made for today’s women to enjoy the same rights as men as well as the right to be generally divested of societal pressures on where the proper place for a woman is. There seems to have been a paradigm shift which shows the modern woman going overboard with the whole independent theme and somewhat becomes an overzealous version of a 17^th century male. However, before I indulge in rampant self-flagellation let me remind myself why I am fed up with Successful Singleton Suzy.

She is able to waltz into any place in the world and demand whatever she can afford without suffering dependence on a “benefactor”. She is able to pursue both family and career without having to feel she is being pulled in two different directions. She is able to enjoy her success without having to constantly fight for the right to pursue such success.

And yet, even with all of these “rights”, Singleton Suzy is still not happy. No, she is misunderstood and believes herself to be on the fringes of modern society, without a proper place. She is the sufferer of the “Successful Single Woman Over 28 Phenomenon” as having been outlined by many “scholars” one may find on the internet.  Okay, perhaps there are legitimate reasons that can be argued that young successful women are a lonely group of people but there are mitigating circumstance that they ought to take responsibility for.

This phenomenon basically outlines that certain women in their late 20s are unhappy and lonely; they apparently suffer from a Quarter-Life Crisis (made popular by the book, TwentySomething: The Quarter Life Crisis of Jack Lancaster by Ian Hollingshead. The Quarter-Life Crisis details the emotionally rollercoaster Twenty Somethings undergo once they come to the realisation that they have achieved great strides in their careers and are now in the first flush of real wealth. Seemingly, they can’t cope with this. The natural developmental stage that one who has achieved a career and success must then undergo is to seek out a mate and get to the business of creating a family; it’ Psychology 101. Suppressing this urge because “that is no longer what is expected of women” is probably the root cause of all this angst Twenty Somethings then experience.

So instead of going out, meeting people and socialising Successful Singleton are living behind their computers, blogging ferocious and correcting grammar of social networks.  They voraciously collect Twitter followers and spend a great deal of time engaging social and political commentators and weighing in with their “wealth of life experience” on matters such as world politics and the economic status of third world countries, the developed world’s continuing  pillaging of such third world nations’ natural resources and the futility of the Iraqi wars. They erudite and they are brilliant.

An article on the single women over 28 years old of China reveals that they seem to feel above the average guy in the street who they might have otherwise married had these women been less educated and unsuccessful. The premise of the article is that these women are being badgered by their family (read “moms”) to settle down and start making babies. The outrage! How dare families suggest such an abomination, these women have chosen their paths and those paths have no detours to Baby City to buy the latest prams for their offspring thank you very much!

I’m going to be honest; as a woman “of a certain age”, I am terrified. I am terrified of being alone and I want to change it. I am giving to the primal nature of my humanity.  I want to admit that lurching home after yet another networking session where I consumed great wine, scrumptious food and partook in “life-changing” and “opinion-shaping” conversation is no longer enough.

I want the picket fence, not the two-storey walk-up two-bedroom flat in a trendy neighbourhood. I want the SUV, not the hatchback or the deliciously sexy sports car that has been home to many of my shoes and handbags that never seem to make it out the bucket seats at the back. I want to rush home after work, frazzled because I need to make dinner. Bugger the take-out because I want to try out that recipe I saw while Nigella Lawson belt out. I’m happy to concede that going to the carwash with my Sunday newspapers while chugging down Seattle Coffees’ café lattes, rabidly Tweeting my opinion on ever y lead story is no longer satisfying. I want to watch my husband spend an inordinate amount of time washing my car, not because he particularly wants to but because I hinted I might drag him shopping with me and the kids if he so much as looks like he is not very very busy!

 Most of all, I want someone else to share my success and my children to bear witness I did more than just climb some corporate ladder in this life. Because at the end of the day I want a legacy; and I have realised that I don’t have Mandela-esque ambitious enough to leave a legacy for the entire world, just a legacy for a family of my own.

And why the heck shouldn’t I want that life, despite centuries of female revolutions I don’t believe the intrinsic part of human nature has altered all that much. We were born to be with someone who fits us; this is why so many people are unhappy being single. Why can we not allow that Successful Singleton Suzy is also just another human being craving that connection but finding it incredibly difficult because she also happens to have achieved a measure of wealth and independence at a young age? These are the same women, who in their late thirties begin to bemoan never having children.

The Guardian’s Ellie Mae O’Hagan is one such Successful Singleton who feels much aggrieved by the stereotypical image of a successful young woman and says there seems to be “still the cultural belief that single women beyond a certain age are faulty somehow.” In her article, “Scrap that single woman stereotype”, O’Hagan claims to have spoken to a multitude of single women who were more than happy with their single lifestyle and feel that have no reason to be married or procreate.

I spoke to my own multitude, admittedly it was mostly women on my Twitter feed, Facebook profile, (which as a Successful Singleton I will have you know I have in spades) and the resounding opinion on this was similar to mine; we as single women need to pretend to be happy being single because if we say anything else then we are admitting the stereotype, or we are exhibiting the same selfishness that has led to our success, wanting fingers in all pies. The women I spoke to largely felt that it is natural and acceptable to want to be married; they did not claim that it was unnatural to not want those things a Successful Singletons claim they are being viewed. My multitude felt society frowned more upon women who felt they could straddle both family and career as comfortably as one would a gentle gelding.

What is galling is that those who purport to be happy being single have been representing themselves as the spokespeople for the Successful Singletons; so much so that we women who feel as I do are now the ones who start to feel like social pariahs who do not know what they really want out of life. It now seems as if every woman must choose between being a housewife or a Successful Singleton, as if the very fabric of our society is not testament to the fact that women can be both!

Furthermore, women such as me are very clear about what we want, we’d like to keep the whizz-banging career, possibly improving on it beyond our wildest imagination AND we also want 2.5 kids with a husband who loves to jog and is an extreme hunk. Yeah we would like this guy to be marginally successfully, but it is not a hard fast rule that they pursue the same corporate ladder I’m on (it would be totally idiotic to want a mate you couldn’t grow with). The only problem now is that we aren’t allowed to say all this out loud, or lord forbid, in the presence of other Successful Singletons! How dare we let the team down like this by kowtowing to basic human instinct and being so selfish as to want it all?

Among my favourite Suffragists is Emily Stowe, who incidentally was married and had children. She was also the first Canadian woman to become a medical doctor; a quintessential woman if ever there was one; one who pursued her ambitions without giving up the joys of being a woman that each female is born with. I take comfort from this quotation of another pioneer of the women’s rights movement, Susan Anthony; “The older I get, the greater the power I seem to have to help the world; I am like a snow-ball, the further I am rolled the more I gain.” In those simple words I am absolved of the guilt I would have otherwise shouldered for daring to get older than my later 20s and allow my dreams to shift beyond making a great career.