It started with a bang.
And a whimper.
It all started about a week before it started. On or about Saturday, the 4th of December 1999 at 21:30 I was hanging out at Cool Runnings with my posse of perennial bachelors. When I say "my" posse, I really mean Darrel's posse, but he wasn't there that night.
A trucker, three programmers and a man with no visible means of support. They were serious, honest men, I was the scoundrel. My last relationship had fallen apart some time before, must have been at least a week.
Amidst the philosophical discussion that all decent bachelor guys indulge in: "why do women prefer bastards"; "what is wrong with us?" Yada, yada, yada... I espied two lasses with no place to seat themselves. With the confidence borne of not giving a shit, I stood up, walked over and invited them to join our table. They agreed. I sat back and watched.
(Now, it is important to say again at this point that I had recently felt the comfort of consensual love making. There is a certain sans souci that a man feels when he is not desperate for a woman's love. This is an important point to the narrative arc.)
The evening passed amiably enough. None of my friends where arseholes and the (Potchefstroom) ladies were indeed perfect ladies. There was talk, of what I know not. There was wine and there was beer. We parted on good terms with hugs all round.
As we were leaving, the alpha lady pressed a piece of paper into my hand as she hugged me, "call me."
I called her. How was I to know the sweet agony that was to emanate from that call.
The next Saturday I drove to Potch. I wish that words could express the delight of being drawn into another's planned fantasy.
My car and bags went to a flat that she had borrowed from a friend for the night. We went for dinner. I met some of her friends. We went back to the flat. Until 2am she tortured me with the lust and the love and the passion of words; of a broken heart splayed wide open.
Then we made love. We made something. Eye to eye, no compromise, no let up, no surrender.
It was detailed, precise, exquisite.
"I have to go home," she apologised.
"I understand," I begged.
"My parents will be suspicious if I stay out all night."
"OK..." my somniloquy.
"And I have to go to church in the morning..."
"I'll come with you if you want," I confessed.
"Really?" she orgasmed.
And so it was that on Sunday 12 December 1999, the first day of the rest of my life, for the first time in seven years I found myself in a church on a Sunday morning with about 3 hours of sleep under my belt and a pastor trying my resolve.
She slid her hand into mine during a prayer. I bravely closed my eyes. Oh what miracles that hand had wrought not 7 hours before. I swear I smiled AMEN!, or Hallelujah!
We had lunch with her folks; a slightly stilted but generally pleasant affair. Her mother seemed to take to me and her dad was not obviously revolted. I am certain that they saw my sallow eyes and their dearest daughter's freshly fundamentalised joie de vivre, but se la vie...
As she walked me to my car, she gave me two gift's:
1) Her copy of the NG churches catechism.
2) Her CD of Leonard Cohen's greatest hits. With a request that I listen to 'Take this Longing'.
So the fantasy was completed with a book of faith and the music of the faithless. We kissed, we hugged, we said goodbye. I drove back to Johannesburg.
I went back to Cool Runnings to meet the herd. One of them showed up and we chatted for a while. It was a lazy Sunday and I was at peace. He had to leave. I SMS'd another member to find out if he and his cohort were coming.
I laid my phone down and closed my eyes. Bliss? Peace? Simple satiation? Exhaustion?
I opened my eyes and saw her. I felt the shock of recognising someone I had never seen before.
"I know you." I saw her for the first time and her surname was Cohen.
A short while later I walked inside and met my wife.
I can no longer recall the name of the lady of Potchefstroom.
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