Mercedes Sayagues
BODY LANGUAGE
It is so much fun dating in this postmodern, post-feminist, post-Aids world. Go for a stroll in the heterosexual jungle, and you can put your thumb on the zeitgeist, on the changing roles of men and women.
After a long, too long, monogamous relationship ended, I took a year-long break from men and their troubles, and was very happy. Only recently did I venture into the market again, and am fascinated by what I find.
For one who grew up in the 1960s and 1970s – when sex was just fun, not the messenger of death – it is a whole new game to think twice about sex and even to walk away from it. We do that all the time now.
Men are becoming more like women used to be, and women are becoming more like men. Women prowl and chase, and make a nuisance of themselves if they want a man. I know a few South African men who had to get restraining orders against girlfriends who would not let go of them. As women express their lust openly, men retreat, and refuse them sex.
Men have become more frivolous, obsessed with their appearance, their thinning hair and their buns. Could you find, 20 years ago, a man who would rather have a blow-dry at the hairdresser than a blow job? It used to be women had nose jobs and breast implants. Today, the latest fad sweeping through American gyms is pec implants and ear reshaping, for men.
Unheard of before: men who wail about commitment, or lack thereof. They seek the long-term emotional insurance derived from the comfort of marriage. Meanwhile, many women with a job they like and that pays well have little interest in marriage. They prefer feeling good with a man without wondering what the future will bring. It used to be the other way round.
Marriage is fast becoming obsolete. It used to be the vehicle for children. But today, when being a single mother is normal and carries no stigma (just some fatigue), women need men even less. And men need women less. Everybody is becoming somewhat self-absorbed.
The signs are all blurred. You find men who look as manly as Warren Beatty but are gay. Men who look caring and sweet but beat up their wives. Pseudo-intellectuals who care more for their pecs than for reading a book. Men who pine for marriage and children, who cook and press their clothes. Women who care not for the niceties of domesticity.
I recently had a humbling experience. I had a wild night of passion while in transit through Johannesburg, with this man who had faxed me love poems in Spanish. From his own description, he was a permaculture farmer and a do-goody, at home with the homeless of Johannesburg and ill at ease at the five-star hotel where I was staying, courtesy of the TV chain that had taken me to Angola.
He wanted to come to me in Harare. I had doubts. I had to file for the Mail & Guardian. I was tired from the trip. But he insisted and I relented.
Well, imagine my surprise when, two days later, he phones and says the surf is up in Cape Town, so he is flying there! The surprise is not that the surf was better than me. I am not that vain. I know that a committed surfer, or elephant hunter or ping-pong player derives intense pleasure from what they do.
No. The humbling experience was that I had been shagging a golden Cape Town surfer – and I had not realised it. I should have wised up when he said he had taken a one- week subscription to a gym in Jo’burg while working with the homeless. I had the clues, and I did not read them. I am wiser now.
I have figured out there is a type of white South African man who poses as champion of good causes, but their do- gooding stops short of their close-cropped hair and their pecs. Coming from privileged backgrounds, spoiled by black nannies and white mothers, they are as self-centred as Madonna, but hide it behind the smoke- screen of organic paprika and NGO work. As I said before, everything is blurred.
Then I had another humbling experience. Two days later, my doorbell rings. There he stood, dressed in shorts, sandals and bandanna, with a big grin on his face and a backpack. “Oh dear, is Cape Town on hurricane watch?” said I.
As it turned out, it wasn’t. And as I discovered, there are nice things about surfers. Their sense of style escapes me, but that is a highly frivolous and personal matter. The humbling experience is that I actually got on well with him and we had a romantic time surfing the waves of my bed. He turned out to be something more than just a surfer but, because everything is blurred, I can’t quite figure him out.
But who cares? As long as you are standing strong on your feet, your emotional bank account is equally solid, and you protect yourself from Aids, it is fun to date in this brave new world.