Simba Chippies

Today is the day after I made the fourth and final attempt at ditching my ex. He took it well last night, no threats of suicide or volcanic vitriol spewing forth as yet – that was until a few seconds ago. Text after text – i want to difflect the pain. How can he still have this effect on me.

He accuses me of so many things – the fact that i have being trying to brake up with him seems to elude him and his slow dissent into self comforting self pity has kicked in. I have switched off my phone. I am writing to you instead.

Last week I saw a friend of mine and he said a very hurtful thing, i pretended not to care, i smiled, nodded and ate my malva pudding with egg yellow custard intensely wishing to fade into the background of the grande gramadoelas backdrop, occasionally polished like the ancient rice and copper bowls on display, then left forgotten, eavesdropping on the millions of conversations taking place over months of mediocre meals.

He said that at some point two years ago i was “droning” on about my personal life too much. He says I have grown since. He seemed pleased to announce. I am much more interesting company, especially now I am quieter – and all this time I thought we were just having a conversation – he asked me how I was – i would tell him – Sorry – Jo – I wanted to say. I didn’t mean to drone. I meant to scream. Perhaps I should have.

I mean to tear the flesh from my face and expose the raw and ugly part of me, that part that even he – my friend wished not to see. Funny – when he “drones” on and on about his family, Latin wife, 2 young kids, his past escapades – his conquests i sit quietly and listen. He romanticizes being colored, he jokes that in fact he is a brown man trapped in a white body. A part of me escaped momentarily and slapped him on the spiritual plane. I cant stand when people say stupid shit like that.

He is 70 years old and makes movies, his family worked closely with Barnato’s, old money, lots of money. I told him that being colored is not all tra-li-la-li-la, that Taliep and Soli and now Mark and Jo Barber has f*cked us sideways while we are smiling, the voice over “artists” for ads about being simba chippies and domestos thick bleach, that we are teenage pregnancies, fetal alcohol syndrome and domestic violence, tik and straight hair, we are kombuis Afrikaans and kombuis Engel’s, blue lead based paint and grandmothers tears, we are angry, we are poor and we are fed up of being muffled, stifled and colorful coons.

I asked him why he was doing what he was doing, he said he felt guilty. That is family fortune had been made on the backs of slaves in mines – those same slaves are his friends now he dips his toe in their worlds and it curls with delight when he gets to say k*ffir or jou ma se p**s to a brown or black person and then he retreats to the safety of the burbs, kids in private school Pilates and pony lessons as soon as shit get too real, i thanked him for his honesty and said i shall be seeing less of him, in my mind of course – I am much too wimpish to say it out loud. What other people think of me still matters – for some bizarre reason – he showed me where he was born and grew up, a fairy tale house even Hansel and Gretel would have envied. I would have turned green with envy but how do you envy something so unattainable.

I still feel like crying – no screaming – i dont know what sound will come out – what word the scream’s shape would take. If i could cry right now I would, guttural sounding tears for no good reason, tears of relief perhaps, tears acknowledging the stress I have been under since last June. Tears because its almost over and yet I know its not yet begun. Tears because they can fall silently over my cheeks, the tracks are so familiar they congregate in my neck, cold and damp like that walk from school when he said I could not go anymore. Aaaargh. I dont fucking eat Simba chips anymore!