rip january

strange piece for strange times, luv!

The heat here is shocking. It shimmers, killing all of the dead things inside of you. Your body becomes an incinerator, churning away, until the fever emanates from you. You have become the sun.

I walked behind a friend last week, slow from the events of the previous night, my legs moving lethargically, my feet dragging on the Rustenburg pavement. Everything is slower on land, the ocean breeze from the Atlantic dying by the time it reaches Bloemfontein. There is no air to breathe here. Only heat. And the sounds of Rustenburg, which are no sounds at all.

I wake every morning at 6am, with the exception of Monday. Monday is staff briefing, which requires a 5:30am rise. I turn on to my back and stare at the ceiling of the room in which my grandmother lay. At 27, you can move back into your childhood home but not your childhood room. There are spirits there which will not respect your adult figure. To be 27 and moving back into your childhood home requires you to take the guest bedroom in which your grandmother took temporary residence every time she visited from the Cape. To complain about the heat and nag you about elocution. I lie on my back for 7 minutes at 6am every morning and commune with her. She’s alive, against all odds, but I know she listens to my thoughts, even if she does not understand them. When I lie on my back at 6am for 7 minutes, I can hear your thoughts too. I do not understand them.

When the 7 minutes are up, I swing my legs over the side of the bed and propel myself upwards, into my life. I listen at the door to hear if anyone is in the laundry room and wait for the coast to clear. I cannot begin my day with words and when you no longer live alone, you are at constant risk of being required to fill the air with them. I love to talk and I love to talk with my family, but only after my 6 minute shower.

Coffee, then, and breakfast in the lounge. It’s the furthest room in the house, and the one that looks over the road. Through the burglar bars. And the fence. And the electric beams. People are always telling me how unsafe Rustenburg is. I believe them, but not in any consequential way. Perhaps Twitter, perhaps a New Yorker article, always a few Instagram stories. I feel myself, sometimes, a lone soldier in a solitary bunker, listening at the radio for signs of life out there. It is joyful and rich and sometimes annoying, but always there.

And the book. Every morning there is the question of the book - when will it come, and how? And where? There is not much on the page, but there is lots in the lounge, which has become the space to Think About the Book. Which is, I’m told, and essential part of the process of Writing the Book. Every morning the book, and every morning I remind myself that I am settling in, that I just started working, that I am too close, still, to the change and the turmoil and the stress and the heartbreak. And then I sit some more in the lounge and think that I do not feel stressed or heartbroken and remember that my best talent and worst trait is my ability to reason myself out of responsibility. I open the Note I have running called ‘things i’m learning in rustenburg‘ and type ‘too smart to ever take real accountability‘. This is wedged between ‘i’m a lover boy‘ and ‘something interesting about masculinity‘. I am learning so much about myself in the lounge in Rustenburg. I resolve to write 5000 words of the book before the end of January and notice that it is the 4th of February. But not in any consequential way.

January was full and quick, and also desparately slow. There is the new school, which confounds me because it is at once new and also old, and also because it is hot. I love it, maybe like no place I have ever loved. In my free periods (which I now have!) I walk, sometimes, from the one end of the campus to the other. It takes 20 minutes, or more. I am not a fast walker. In Rustenburg I do not have to be. The students are not like any I’ve ever known. They push each other, and chide, and I seem to have been made to fit them. Which I was because they are being made by the same place that made me. We like each other, a lot. Perhaps even love. We annoy each other, I’m sure, but there is concession on both parts. I was suspicious of capitalist family rhetoric until I came back here and remembered that it was true, before it had been coopted. There is so much of the Before here, which pushes me and holds me back. i like to sit in the lounge and poke at it and examine closely how it pokes back. I am myself, as Before, and also After, but mostly During. It makes casual conversation and small talk exceedingly difficult, because I want to yell at people about the truth of all existence. I am the sun. But not in any consequential way.

There is, of course, the evenings, which are hard sometimes, and nothing at other times. They made me nervous, these long expanses of time post-work with nothing to do. In Rustenburg there is a team of gender non-conforming individuals who roll up the streets slowly at 5:45pm. The streetlights do not come on and the shop windows are boarded up. There is nothing to do when the sun goes down. Except Spur, and sometimes the movies, provided you have not seen them all already and have a taste for biblical animation, which I do not. I am surprised at how my taste is shifting - how things I used to disdain have already started to loosen themselves inside of me, even just over January. The first time it happened, I panicked, terrified to lose my erudition and class. The second time, I relaxed into it and realised that Jacaranda is the most popular radio station for a reason. The music is pretty good.

And yet, the biblical animation remains out of my grasp. And anyways everyone knows the only way to truly recreate the bible stories is through the iconic vehicle of the movie musical. Certainly not animation.

People here keep asking how I’m doing or how I’m settling in, or how I could leave Cape Town and come here? It’s an impossible question. I am profoundly unsettled. In Phantom Thread, Daniel Day-Lewis’ Reynolds laments his situation, spitting out, “There is an air of quiet death in this house… and I do not like the way it smells.” There is so much of the inexplicable happening, as it always does in January. So much change, and failure and falling. And finding, and also filling. There is nothing settled about the month, or about the place, or about the time. There is an air of quiet death everywhere. Which I am grateful for, because it is a sensation I can hold on to. I can grab it, and hoist myself out of bed every morning. It fascinates me, and thrills me, and excites me. And I do like the way that it smells.

I like to tell people I’ve always felt that I will not live passed 30, that I cannot see the future in the ways that other people can, in the way that other people make plans and provisions for it. I am beginning to understand what I meant by that, how the heat is killing the dead things inside of me. I’m beginning to understand that I had to move back here, that I had no choice. I can’t say that to my colleagues and my new friends, because normal people do not speak that way. So I tell them about rent prices, and longing for family. I leave the prophecies and premonitions for my Substack.

It’s true, the dead reside in Rustenburg. Sometimes in the bodies of those still living. But I like the dead. They are my friends.

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chicken soup for the soul:

i’ve got loads of little gems for you my preciouse (plural of precious) so let’s dive straight into it!

hot boi of the week:

this week, i’ve got a couple of specimens for you to thirst over. of course, my heart truly belongs to the man with whom famed iconess kelsey levieux and i did exactly one (1!) calendar pull-up in the station last week, that offered us sips of his wine. but i’ve said too much already. give it up for candidate number one:

wagner moura! put simply: he’s hot! and also really sweet and has a GREAT smile AND he’s been nominated for an academy award! look at that earring! and the way he is gently clutching that golden globe! i love him! maybe one day he will love me!

candidate number two:

sisters, if timmy t has no haters, i am dead! listen here, i have been OUTSPOKEN on how deeply unattracted i am to this man. and then i made the fateful decision to attend the sandton sterkinekor’s 7:30pm showing of the hit motion picture marty supreme, and i felt my cells mutate, my body shift, my soul change. he is HAWT in that movie. famously i love a lil jewish man and timmy t pushes it to the max! turns out i’m really into a monobrow and a pair of sexy glasses. and i like the way he fucks gwyneth paltrow and odessa a’zion. and i ESPECIALLY like the way he plays ping pong.

candidate number three:

david jonsson! well sure! it’s likely, isn’t it? that the man the entire universe has fallen for would also hit my childhood house like a bomb. the thing is, you lot only JUST fell in love with him. i’ve been in love with him since myself and two other individuals tuned into the first season of industry during cooorvid. and then re-fell in love with him a few years later in the iconic rye lane. and the thing is that you guys are in love with him in an objectifying, base way, while i have fallen for his charm, his charisma, and also his chin. when i look at pictures of him i get that ache in my stomach that i get every time i watch love, simon. which could mean nothing.

sexy song of the week:

thank you kelsey for introducing me to the coolest way to create your music taste which is just working your way through alt-j’s ‘best of the year‘ playlist. it’s a fool-proof method! first song for your ears is:

‘dancing2’ by keli holiday! phew, mamma mia! this one is pure adrenaline! famously my metric for a great song is whether or not it makes me want to run and sweetie, this one makes me feel like spirit (famous stallion of the cimarron). yassis man! it’s romantic and hot and makes me believe in love which is my favourite thing to do in this life.

we also have:

‘mina’ by dickon hinchliffe! this is a GEM which i was reminded of because shakti is finally watching the lost daughter! this one is spooky and mysterious and taps into something ugly in all of us. listening to it is a purge, a sacrifice, a ritual to the next world. i love it a lot!

okay bye now! keep dancing icons! you may never see me again! or you will see me tomorrow! life is a hilarious thing [tongue hanging out emoji].