The family Man

My varsity ex-girlfriend, after ‘sort of coming across your blog,’ which means she googled me; decided to drop me an email recently. Last week she ‘happened to be in your city (Cape Town)’ and thought ‘I’d give you a call to see if you were free for lunch or something.’ This is the part where I’m supposed to pretend I’m a gentleman and say agreed because I thought it’d be nice to catch up on our respective lives for old times sake.

The truth is, I’m soon gonna hit the big 4, and though living with my seven year old daughter has it’s rewards it isn’t everything, if you catch my drift. There was a certain trembling curiosity, even chaste flirtatiousness, in my agreeing to meet my ex. I had hoped we might rekindle the fire and so on and so on. I was also genuinely hoping for a reforming and convivial afternoon. We decided to meet at Long Street for lunch.

We greeted with a restrained ambiguous hug before caressing each other with non-committal smiles. I had chosen the coffee-house as one of the last distinct locations that have not yet been deracinated and homogenized by the modern consumerist Mall culture. Imagine my slight irritation when after we exchanged greeting the first thing she asked was; “Is there a Starbucks around here? They do not sell any caffè latte here.”
“Why not ask them to make an espresso with lots of milk?”
“It’s no the same thing.” What’s the difference? I wanted to say but thought better of it.

She took out her magazine and got absorbed on it. Her imitative desires have always made her a sucker for the wheel of fashion, I thought to myself.
“Because I could not get my latte I decided to go for my early afternoon drink.” She was pointing to her glass of pastis. “I find its cool liquorice taste very palatable; trust French epicurism if anything. For lack of interesting things to do I’ve become a bon vivant.” She said, returning her eyes to the magazine. It might be a good time to reveal that in the past few years she has been to France and the US on some extended magazine and economic training.
“I see in your choice of the place that you still prefer the romance to style. I would have preferred something a little classy.” She said that in tone of bright affection that was meant to be sarcastic.
“I’ll take a little anodyne luxury anytime to . . .”
“Soigné?”
“Fake-posh is the word I was looking for.” We were hardly ten minutes in seeing each other after eight years yet were already on each other’s throats; back to our old ways. “Don’t we have anything better to talk about?” I asked trying to break the sense of quiet tension left by my last sentence.
“I see you’re still pretending to be the alienated writer, looking down on poor intellectual deprived like us.”
“I have my difficulties but they are better than bourgeois philistinism.” The truth of the matter is, I realised then, that if we ever had any other way of relating to each other we forgot it long time ago. “Otherwise how’re things with you?” I asked, training my eye on her magazine to peak at what had engrossed her so much.
“I here you’ve become quite a family man, uxorial I guess, with a kid and all.” She made it sound as if I had regressed.
“I’m not married. Yes I live with my daughter since she was nine months.”
“That must be quite a responsibility.” She put the magazine down and turned to the menu; “Let’s see what’s to eat here in the bohemian coffee-bar.”
“Must you be cynical about everything?”
“I suppose will have to settle for sandwiches?”
“Sandwiches would be fine by me.” I raised my arm to the waiter, eager to be done with our meeting. I ordered a glass of wine also, which was met with a look of bewilderment by my companion.
“Do you trust their wine selection here? I perused through and found it, like, so blasé.” She threw her head back as she said that.
“I’m okay with it,” said I, trying to recover my self-esteem.
“Phew! Actually I’ll just have vichyssoise and a green salad.” And then she turned back to her magazine again. “Listen to this.” She went on to read the piece on the magazine in confected excitement. I tried to follow the intoxicating lyricism of clichés and chewed-up self-help agitprop of what she was reading but eventually had to give up when I noticed I wasn’t getting anywhere.
“This stuff is like, amazing;” said she in conclusion. The waiter arrived with our orders.
“How is Jo’burg?”
“Definitely not the fin de siècle city we left in 99. It’s rediscovering it’s soul. And Cape Town?”
“Urbane, cosmopolitan, aesthetic and airy; it’s a wonderful mélange really.”
“And a little delinquent, which I imagine suites you well.”
“I’m not sure I understand what you mean.”
“This Vichyssoise taste like boiled rags. I guess the salad will have to be the piéce résistance of my meal then.” She continued after a while. “Elitist is what I meant to say about Cape Town.”
“O! Come on; if you must criticize the city at least respect her enough to come up with something more original than that.”
“Okay; she has her back on the continent and eye on the sea.”
“That’s a dead metaphor for the Cape Town of the twenty first century. Have you looked around this city lately? It is quickly cultivating an African identity.”
“And consciously dedicating everything to the pursuit of pleasure.”
“The city has character.”
“And Joz doesn’t?”
“They are different.”
“You damn right they are, the other has too much social exclusion and European pretensions.”
“Says Ms I want my latte.” She turned her eyes back to her magazine. My thoughts drifted to her obsessive need to appear sophisticated in my eyes. The magazine was her personality magnifier. She wanted me to see that this is where she is now; the world of pampered people in provocative poses, sports cars and exotic perfumes. But now and then I caught a stranded dislocation in her face; and happily the girl I once fell in love with.
She kept pointing to things she still needed that were advertised on the magazine. I guess the magazine was fulfilling its commercial task of enticing her into wanting more. We said our good byes after our lunch without really having talked about anything of real value in both our lives. As I watched her press the remote controlled alarm of her German sedan something broke alive in me.
It is always sad and embarrassing to catch the pretences of those we can see through, especially if they are close to us. She had come not to see me per se but to gloat; to intimidate me with nouvelle vague. To make me see in regret what I had supposedly missed. Her behaviour assured me that I had made a right decision in deciding, almost a decade ago, that our personalities were not compatible.
There were days I wondered about my decision. I thank her for the reassurance and the freshness she unwittingly reintroduced in my chosen life. She made me realised for sure that I’m an irretrievably family man. Her visit gave me clarity that’s usually absent on my daily life of homeworks, school meetings, ballet classes, Cool Cats, Shriek beddings, headless Barbie dolls that turn up everywhere in the house, story book readings, toothaches, asthmatic attacks in the middle of the night and the anxiety of waiting for doctors at hospitals in those hours, and so forth and so forth.
When we parted I went to pick my daughter up from school. She told me that one her classmates was making fun of her because on the last parent meeting when they were told they should bring their moms she brought her dad.
“And what did you say to her.” I asked her.
“I told her my dad is also my mom tshi!” That my girl. And that is what I’m talking about, little blessings like those that give real meaning to my life.