Short of admitting that you didn’t vote Democratic Alliance, there is no quicker way of being stricken from social rolls in Cape Town than to declare a loathing for beach-going.
No longer does the phone ring with invitations to go to evening concerts at Kirstenbosch, where people are united by the common misery of having dew seep up through their underwear. No longer is one embraced by African-American exchange students at the Drum Café whose names reveal parents whose grasp of Africa extended no further than Disney musicals: Kwaazaakuzu Johnson and Bongowongo McGraw cut you dead when you pass in the street.
In fact, try to suggest that Clifton Fourth is a white ghetto of pampered misery, or that Muizenberg is a picturesque septic-tank, and one quickly learns what it is to be from Johannesburg or Durban. Or anywhere northeast of Newlands.
But the fact remains that beaches are almost entirely sinister. For a million years we kept away from them, and started visiting them in only the 19th century. Not coincidentally this period also saw the rise of militant nationalism, colonialism, genocide, rhyming couplets, zeppelins, Wagner, in fact almost everything that has made our world more dangerous today.
The next century was no better, with beaches invariably covered with dead American soldiers and dead Alaskan cormorants coated in oil. Bette Midler appeared in a film called Beaches, which involved a song called Wind Beneath My Wings and had nothing to do with cormorants, who only had Exxon crude and maggots beneath their wings.
Perhaps it’s only logical that a world in which Midler is allowed to become a celebrity, rather than sewn into a sack and strapped to a ducking stool, will also include people who think it is diverting to lie almost naked on an expanse of whitish dirt, resting their carefully made-up faces on a thin crust of flaked-off human skin, sea-slug droppings and vagrant pee.
Still, now and then one sees interesting things on beaches. For instance a couple of summers ago, while cowering in a makeshift hide of furs and driftwood, I spied Angelina Jolie at a particularly trendy stretch of skin-flakes. In the grand tradition of celebrity anonymity she was wearing a baggy hooded top, baggy pants and had a baggy man at her side who was either a hobo or Billy-Bob Thornton or both.
The impression of indigence and squalor was completed by her mouth: fashionistas insist that her pout is sensual, but it never quite dispels the impression that she has just gone six rounds in a trailerpark, bare-knuckled and sans gumguard, and has come off second best.
Surrounded by naked golden bodies, Ms Jolie and her chaperone of no fixed abode were unmissable, but perhaps that was their intention. To no avail: the golden bodies were too entranced by vanity to notice …
Today one can’t take one’s dachshund for a carefully choreographed swagger along the Sea Point promenade without stubbing one’s toe on Nick Cage or Scarlett Johanssen. Ian Gandalf McKellern holds up traffic outside the Mount Nelson (walking stick aloft he bellows, “You shall not pass!” and tumbles into the abyss of a manhole) and Danny Glover sidesteps Long Street taxis, lethal weapons one through four.
All of which must be deeply troubling to our sportsmen. Ten years ago the clubs of Newlands pulsated to the wagging of Bobby Skinstad’s tongue.
Flyhalf Joel Stransky leaned across bar-tops and growled emphysemic thanks to legions of devotees. People bought Jonty’s Fashion Trousers just to be able to say they’d got into his pants. And above them all, beaming down with benevolent, dazzling dentistry, Joost and Amore sipped Klippies-and- ambrosia and surveyed their tiny kingdom of celebrity.
One can only assume that our former icons will react as most colonised peoples react: counterattack, or retreat. Counterattacks have included dating Wonderbra models, a risky manoeuvre for men who have found themselves relegated to being the other half of considerably more compelling celebrities. But most will retreat, into pubs and hotel bars in the hinterland, to oases of insularity, where their exploits are still celebrated and their presence still draws a crowd.
And the original superstars, perhaps now elderly men riding tractors in far-flung corners of the country, whose sporting legends have disappeared with the radio waves that fuelled them, will smile and chew on straws and shrug. Ja, boet, it doesn’t last forever.
Hollywood has stormed the beaches, and local celebrity is mortally wounded. Again with the beaches. Enough said.Â