‘Well, let’s be grateful. At least we don’t still have each other!” I joked to my ex-boyfriend of six and a half years. It was just the other day, as we clinked friendly beers in a bar.
”Yes, pity we’re the only ones who realise it,” he laughed grimly.
We’re both grateful every day that we’re no longer lovers, even though our separate lives have been rocky. Dealing with our warlike relationship on top of everything else could have led to violent psychosis, horoscope reading or detox diets.
But try getting our social circle to believe it’s over…
We’re perpetually being scrutinised for evidence of an impending reconciliation. As he arrives at parties, I sense raised eyebrows. My friends are still scared to flirt with him. When we argue, people joke ”ah, lover’s quarrel”. One friend has even bet a case of imported beer on us openly admitting we’re secret lovers by New Year’s day.
It’s a case of ”seek and ye shall find”. Proving you are sleeping with someone is as easy as pie. Proving you’re not? Impossible.
To evade suspicion, we leave public places separately. But the rumour-mongers are undeterred. Just the other day, I heard from a friend of a friend that my ex and I were an item again. She’d been at the same party as us and she’d spread the good news.
I rack my brain to think what we’d done to make her believe we were back together. Did we hug? No. Kiss? Definitely not! Did we scream at each other and call each other names? Perhaps as a joke.
Ha. ”You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave… ” — the past is our Hotel California.
You see, I grew up in the late Eighties and early Nineties. Apartheid was law. And things changed so fast between 1989 and 1999 that a new mini-society was formed every year. Within that society is a circle still smaller. Now spread all over the world, it’s a loose but binding network of people who hated apartheid, even though the system supposedly worked to their advantage.
Perhaps you’re one of us? Let’s see … do you remember the first time you heard the words ”everything is political?” Have you done a SWOT analysis in a haze of cigarette smoke? Have you read Gramsci — or pretended to at dinner? Were the labels on the alcohol you abused usually red? Are you reading this newspaper?
You’ve probably met me, actually. Perhaps I beat you at pool once? I’m guessing that if I told you my real name, we’d find fewer than three degrees of separation between us.
But it’s not just that the endless milling around in the liberal labyrinth leaves us linked. It’s also the fact that we’re both still single.
Why are we single? Well, for my part, every man I meet seems disturbingly preoccupied with my relationship with my ex. This is off-putting.
Seriously. I’ve grown used to answering the question ”How’s your ex?” on most dates. At length. They say idiotic things like ”Oh, he’s still in love with you”. Or they ask you, ”What went wrong? You guys are so perfect for each other!” So they’ve heard.
The phrase ”I guess you had to be there” tugs at my tongue. Usually, I just laugh it off. But what I really want to do is scream ”I’m not sleeping with him! Okay?”
Yes, no matter how enlightened my social set pretend to be, they’re still basically sexist South Africans. Love and territorial rights go together. Until someone else convincingly claims me, I’m like unoccupied land. I’ll remain property of the most recent settler. So to make it clear I’m not his, I need to find another man … and fast!
The best bet is probably to bag myself a dashing Third World foreigner. Someone who’s never met my friends. Then dress up in an outsize doily and marry the poor dude in an obtuse, tasteless, sexist, humiliating, religious public ceremony.
Super fast. I’ve got to get those wedding invites out super fast! Because I wouldn’t put it past people to organise a surprise wedding for me and my ex.
Picture it — an event similar to those unbearable surprise birthday parties, only with more booze, vomiting teenage boys and weeping women dressed in lilac.
And here’s the big surprise: I might just go along with it. Just maybe. Because you know how people are — if my ex and I were married, at least nobody would still believe there was anything sexual between us.