WHY I LIKE MIKE

In my head I am polyamorous. I say in my head because in real life I don’t even have a date on the horizon. But in my head, there’s more romance and slutty intrigue than a Jackie Collins paper back. There’s the guy in the canteen at Wits that puts the zest in my meals there. Just sitting in his proximity gives whatever I am munching on “flavour-flave”. The guy in a certain boutique shop at Rosebank mall who makes me wanna try on every item in the shop and ask him “how do I look?”, (to which he’d probably answer: “crazy”), there’s a few guys at Babylon Illovo and Babylon Centurion who inspire a certain kind of pelvic thrust and I even have a guy that I see in the health stores and restaurants in and around Greenside. I can’t buy anything vegan-friendly without wondering if I’ll see the “Greenside guy”. These are individuals that I don’t necessarily see every time I go to that venue, just on rare occasions, enough to make it a novelty and something to hope for, or look forward to. There’s the Cresta centre guy, the Majestic video shop on Gleneagles guy, the Killarney mall guy, the Woolies guy, and more than a few on Facebook that make me want to send them a “poke”… You get the picture. I may occasionally greet some of these gentlemen, but for the most part I hardly acknowledge their existence when I am around them. It’s enough of a thrill hoping to see them or bump into them, and just to be near them. I don’t actually want to get to know them and shatter the illusion and snatch them out of my fantasy and into the dreaded “friend-zone”. It’s a blessing and a curse that I make friends with people so quickly, so remaining distant keeps the illusion and the thrill intact without the danger of rejection or disappointment. These chaps add an extra motivation and/or thrill to popping out and picking up those soya sausages or a DVD or two, a way to spice up the mundane everyday ‘ins and outs’. I guess I could call them my “phantom-relationships”, it makes sense if I consider that I had an imaginary friend as a child, an imaginary boyfriend seems a natural progression. Imaginary boyfriends are a lot like pistachios, it’s neither easy nor necessary to have just one. There are many places and spaces in the world that I need motivation to fill. One of my favourite “phantom-boyfriends” is my gym crush. I see him three mornings a week. He is about my height but he doesn’t have long spider-monkey arms like me, he is nicely filled out and substantial. He has dark hair and stubble and beautiful thick eyebrows that canopy blue eyes that are always lost in murky thought. He is introverted and broody like Heathcliff from Wuthering Heights. I’d love to pull a “Cathy” and haunt outside his bedroom window. He is also terminally straight. Whereas, I feel I sometimes waft around like a piece of fluff in the wind, his gait is like that off a smooth round rock rolling slowly down a gentle incline. Introspective and deeply private, he is irresistibly fascinating. After six months of observation I have begun to feel like Sir David Attenborough doing a National Geographic special on the strong, silent straight guy. It may sound stalkerish but, like a good scientist, I am very careful not to disturb my subject. Although I do know that he is aware of me. I only observe him with my peripheral vision and when he is fully clothed (out of respect). He is a fine specimen but he is more than just a quick thrill to me. I’m trying to understand what it is about him that is so captivating and the fact that he hardly speaks to anyone else and is always alone just fuels the flames of his mystery. I really like him. I suspect it is because he is the exact opposite of me. So many of my gay brothers date their exact replicas, but I have always been attracted to the “other”. I don’t have any hopes that he will one day turn to me in the weights section and ask me if I’m available to keep his back warm next winter. I’m not deluded. But my crush on him is mine to cherish. I savour it and enjoy how much easier it is to wake up and go to gym on certain mornings. Not everything in life has to be outcomes based. Sometimes the beauty of something is that it never really takes any form, other than in the fantastical world of the imagination. Some phantom things can make you substantially happy.

VENT

My heart feels so high up my throat it must be peeping through my nose holes. I’ve got a stupid, persistent sadness that I’m struggling to shake these last few days. Last night I told myself I was being silly and that I should just sleep and that all would be well in the morning. But as I recovered from deactivating my morning alarm, there it was, sitting like one of my dogs waiting to be fed, that horrible feeling back again. “Think positive thoughts!” I yell inside my head, “focus on what you do want and less on what you don’t want”, “Be a light of positive energy!” “Think of all the amazing things you’ve been blessed with!” But the red-faced-tantrum-child within me will have none of it. I look in the mirror and almost growl a low “voetsek.” I’m just not buying it anymore. All this “positivity” and “optimism” has become strained like a small closet packed to the brim before the guests arrive, packed with feelings of rejection, fear, abandonment, frustration, anger and disappointment. “I’m bigger than this!”, “It’s no big deal.” Or “Something better will come along!”, can only be heard so many times before they begin to sting your ears like hot air inflated bluebottles on a barefoot beach. I’m sore inside. I want more than what I have and more than what life is offering me and I am choking on the guilt I feel instead of the gratitude I know I should. I’m struggling to keep my bile at bay. Where is my boyfriend? Why am I so repulsive and so easily repulsed? Where is the love? Why am I so superficial? Why do I feel invisible? Too fat and now too thin! What do they want from me? What on earth do I want? WHERE THE HELL IS THE MONEY YOU OWE ME! Am I not worth it? Am I undeserving? Does it all come too easy for me? Do I enjoy what I do so much that I no longer deserve to be paid for it? Why is it so hard for me to fight for the money I have earned? Injustice pulls at my trouser leg again. Every corner of my local mall has Dead Sea cosmetics salespeople lying in wait to harass me. Murphy dictates I must go past all of them to buy what I need. They do not understand the word “no”. I get this crazy urge to throw their Dead Sea salt in their eyes and run, but I just keep declining their “free samples” politely and walk. I pay ten bucks for parking in the shopping centre and then a car guard appears with a passive aggressive hand out too. I put on the radio to calm my nerves and there is a knock at my window. A man with bad teeth and a printed card tries to con me into believing he is deaf so I will give him money for Meth. Can you blame me for wanting to throw my Minions out of my Happymeal? I know that there are hundreds of people in the world literally starving, I know that at this moment around the globe, someone is dying of a terrible disease or being victimised and/or tortured. Yet still, I cannot shake this unease and discord. I cannot settle. I refuse to be satisfied, and I will not be satisfied until I love and am loved by the right person and I am getting the respect and livelihood that I feel in my gut I deserve. I’m not blind to all the good things. I’m just tired of trying to shove all the bad things that have happened into a hopelessly overcrowded space that is threatening to burst open and crash down on me. Admittedly, just writing this tirade has made me feel so much better and vented a zeppelin of my anger-steam. Maybe that’s all that I needed to do. Maybe my shadows merely wanted me to tip my hat at them before they shuttled off into twilight. One thing’s for sure, I feel a lot less shame than I did 695 words ago.

BITTER

I start getting this niggle in my stomach after 10 pm at night, that I may not get enough sleep before the next day dawns. So I frantically go around trying to wrap up everything that I was doing so I can hop into bed. In the process I seem to whip myself into a frenzy which makes falling asleep somewhat of a task. Last night was one of those nights. Curiosity caused me to check in, one last time, on my Gaydar and Manhunt profiles to see if any closeted rugby players hadn't by any chance left a message declaring their undying love. No such luck. I have had a longstanding on and off relationship with internet dating (which is another essay in itself), suffice to say that my current view is nothing ventured, nothing gained and apparently it pays to advertise. I did find a message in my inbox. But it was from a 48 year old man who displayed only a picture of his erect penis and a profile that explained that he and his 52 year old partner were seeking others for “fun” and “good times” with no “issues” or “bullshit.” In the message he asked me where I “performed” and encouraged me to tell him more about myself. I wasn't interested and so I ignored him. In my profile I state clearly that I do not respond to messages from faceless profiles and seeing as I am often ignored by some of the guys I send messages to myself, I have no qualms not wasting anybody’s time by engaging with someone that I do not wish to know better. I am not interested in being a third wheel in a longstanding relationship and have bigger ambitions, than being the supposed “spark” that reignites a couple’s waning flame. Perhaps I am stifled or too closed-minded but I have never been a fan of the “open-relationship.” I am the first to admit that I am far from perfect and am much more experienced at being single than being partnered, but when I do shack up, I don’t like to share. Clearly the absence of my response got this faceless man’s heckles up, because within the five minutes I checked my e-mails there was another message from him. This time he wasn't as friendly. He gave me a rundown of my profile saying that it started out all brazen and “affirmative” (interesting choice of words.) But that it gets weak and fizzles out towards the end and that he is sure that is how I am when I perform on stage or in the bedroom (less eloquently put by him.). I must have read the message ten times. Here I am, 33 years old and enjoying a wonderful career brimming with loving and supportive friends and family and yet once again a bully has managed to rear his ugly head, a faceless bully that has never even met me, never seen me on stage. A man who has managed to find a partner in this life, who should be older, wiser, happier and giving me advice, is instead trying to attack me and bring me down. I should have blocked his profile and gone to sleep. That would have been the wiser thing to do. Instead, I responded: “LOL! Thanks for the feedback. Judging by your comments and the picture on your profile you must be a dick.” I wanted to defend myself. I didn't want this man to think he could talk to me like that. I wanted him to know that I could cut back. Within a few short minutes his response sat in my inbox like a hard-planted blackhead in an otherwise clear complexion. As I opened it I could see it was awash with spelling and grammatical errors and half cast sentences. He had torn away at his keyboard in an attempt to lash me with his poorly translated thoughts. To sum it up he said that he pitied me for believing my career would last anything more than 20 months and that it would end in humiliating sexual favors, and that I would not even be able to afford horse meat with my meager earnings as a prostitute. It was ridiculous and made almost no sense but the bile that fueled the tirade unnerved me. Again I responded: “Sleep tight you bitter old Queen. I pray I never end up like you.” Then I blocked his profile, closed my lap top and went to bed. Even in the safety of my duvet, lying next to my best friend (visiting for two weeks), a woman who oozes talent and loves and respects me, I was still being haunted by this faceless stranger. I was upset with myself for my low blow. Why did I have to call him an old queen? Why did I know that would get to him? What if I did become someone just like him one day? What did I do to attract his negativity towards me? Was it just the full moon outside? Why are people so mean? Why are he and his partner not satisfied with one another? Is Love just a fairy tale I keep trying to sell to myself as a truth? What did he want from me and why on earth is he so unhappy?