Mature And Sure

 

What do I know about having sex with very young women? Not a lot. The first woman with whom I had sex was 36, the second was 32 and the third was 27 and the latter is also then the youngest so far. When I had what might be called a mid-life crisis I had an affair with a 40-year old married lawyer who lives in Johannesburg while I live in Cape Town. Before that happened I was almost hustled by a 26-year old single mother with a new baby but that is only part of the story of the affair and I never had sex with the younger woman who lives in Cape Town and who was not only available but also, I suspected at the time, very keen on finding a step-daddy for her little girl. This non-daddy was not about to step into that position.

 

There had been the 14-year old (who could pass for 16) I went out with a few times on visits home during my first year of National Service but since it was purely a tentative and very platonic relationship I guess she does not quite count. Other than that I have yet to have the pleasure of bonking someone in her late teens or very early twenties. There were no girlfriends during my high school years and none during my varsity years and though I've been out with the odd young chick I've found that I get on best with women around about my own age or within striking distance of it, possibly because they are more worldly and less intolerant of human frailty, more mature and better educated and have their own careers and cars and are less likely to want to move in together straight away, if at all. Also, as the blues song has it, older women don't swell, don't tell and they're grateful as hell.

My friend Lise gave a 42^nd birthday party where she had all her gay male chums and all her twenty something female acquaintances who were seemingly all in media or PR or both and who were one and all frighteningly ambitious to the extent where, by the median age of 25, they had already developed a dissatisfaction with whatever brief career path they'd been following since varsity and were almost ready to start running huge international conglomerates. Maybe my perception reflects badly on me who never had a notebook with dreams, ambitions and five year career plans and who, at age 25, had barely commenced my career, but these young women scared the hell out of me and made no sense to me, at least, not on superficial acquaintance. I listened to one such woman who was a radio PR person and occasional newsreader with a very sexy low-pitched voice with a delectable Swartland accent, chatting to a young man who was clearly very interested in her – they'd both recently broken up with their respective lovers – and the two topics of mutual interest were Grand Prix racing and computer games, neither of which interested me in the least and were indications to me that I would not be able to get through to this young woman who, although apparently highly motivated and with a career vision, sounded a tad limited in her intellectual development.

I was reclining in an easy chair, whisky in hand, while I listened to this exchange on the other side of the lounge. Eventually she realised that my attention was with her conversation.

"Hey, Mister Silent Man!" she said, "What do you say? You haven't said a word."

"Better to be quiet and to be thought a fool than to speak and prove to be one," I quoted some ancient maxim. "Anyway, I'd much rather sit here listening to your voice."

"Thank you kindly," she said, and resumed her chat with her Grand Prix loving buddy. She is still on the radio in mid-morning but I've never run into her again. My friendship with Lise has also died a death.

In the middle of last year I had to find a correspondent in Johannesburg for an important High Court interdict matter I was running from Cape Town for a local client but which had to be conducted in the Witwatersrand Local Division. My first thought was to use a buddy of mine from National Service days but at a meeting between client en our Cape Town advocate it was decided to go with a larger firm – the recommended attorney was someone else's ex-Army buddy -- and I sent off an instructing e-mail. It turned out that this guy was the team leader of the labour law division of the firm and he passed on the instruction to one of his associates, Carly, the attorney with whom I then worked on the matter which did not end successfully for our client a few weeks down the line.

Carly and I exchanged faxes, e-mails and phone conversations. The first were very businesslike and so were the phone conversations but in the e-mails, which went directly to her own inbox, I felt less constrained and started to express my exasperation with the matter and the advocate dealing with it. Major miscalculations had been made, documents could not be found and all in all the matter became a comedy of errors that led me to believe very early on that the application was doomed anyhow, and I conveyed this message to Carly in ironic and sardonic e-mails that she apparently found highly amusing.

One Friday afternoon she phoned me while I was sitting in a new advocate's chambers – the original man had somehow become "unavailable" probably because he could see the way the matter was shaping up to be a disaster – and somehow we had a chat about going for long alcoholic Friday lunches, or at least it was a conversation about those lunches we used to have but did not seem to get around to doing anymore. It was, other than a few perfunctory comments, not a particularly professional chat about business at hand; not exactly a billable conversation.

Carly has a very highly educated, rounded pukka accent and also a low-pitched voice and it was most certainly a pleasure to listen to her talk to me and it was with that chat that I realised that I could quite get to like this woman and I regretted the circumstances of life that had brought about that we practised law in two, far apart cities.

The matter was brought to its unhappy conclusion and for a week or two there was no need for any more communication with Carly, until the question of paying costs came up and I had to e-mail her again with some mundane queries.

This was part of Carly's reply:

Hello stranger - I was beginning to feel very neglected - no more quirky mails to cheer me up - oh well, that's the lot of a correspondent with no correspondence.

 

My surprise was great and pleasant.

 

This was part of my response:

How am I supposed to feel? You never write, never phone...

Those e-mails were very serious indeed and were not intended to cheer anyone up. Obviously I've completely missed my target audience.

At least you're not a patient with no patience.

I trust the above represents an elegant sufficiency of quirky.

The rest is history – it is now, anyhow. Our exchanges quickly escalated from friendly joshing to flirtation and then outright suggestiveness, the latter aspects emanating from Carly who very early on saw a potential in the situation that had escaped me, particularly because we were living and working in separate cities and because Carly was married to boot.

 

Pretty soon we were exchanging SMS messages, such as this series that refer to a parallel developing situation in Cape Town.

 

Not satisfied with salacious cyber skinner the phantom phone finger finds another forum!

 

Love that alliteration. U r 2 good 2 my mind. 4ever 4midable.

Interesting lecture, lotsa wine, yummy snacks, exciting company (even an invite for motor racing). Now languishing content in hot bath. Mood much improved!

 

Who wants to race your motor? My evening so far quite interesting too.

Dare I ask, or would that be interrupting something?

Back home, weirded out. Shall I just write?

All ok? If so I guess e-mails best? Luv & smooches!!?

Sorry, have really crap signal @ home, esp. in bathroom, & no landline. Pointless even trying 2 talk. But SMS & call in office anytime 2morrow.

 

Now worried about u. Can't pick up yr message (why can send & rec SMS but not calls?) All ok?

A ok. Reading your last mails of today.

Sleep tight. XX etc.

U r so special, qt!

That's plagiarism! U, however r da sugarest eva!

 

The back story to this exchange had its origin about a month before when a young woman called Leonora came to see me on a legal matter that concerned the non-payment of salary due to her.

 

Leonora told me her whole legal problem over the phone and then came to see me an hour later and repeated it almost verbatim, and along the way I also learnt (without any prompting from my side) that she was a 26-year old single mother – she'd brought the baby -- who was born in Italy and raised in Malmesbury and therefore fluent in Italian, English and Afrikaans, used to live in Milnerton but was now living with her mother in Plumstead and that her one year old daughter suffered from chronic ear infection. On the last topic I could bond with her since a late friend of mine had a boy who at one time also suffered from the same complaint and at least from second hand experience I knew how terrible it was for parent and child.

 

Leonora was quite pretty, with a round baby fat kind of face, very long honey blonde hair and she wore a top that showed off a very decent cleavage. I must admit that it was a strain to keep my eyes on her face and off the generous expanse of milky white bosom that almost gleamed on the other side of the boardroom table. I was reminded of a few Playboy centrefolds I'd seen.

 

I took on the case, wrote a letter or two and eventually settled the thing in Leonora's favour. Her ex-employer undertook to pay her what she was claiming and then Leonora asked me kindly to accompany her to her previous place of work to pick up the cheque. She did not trust her old boss. I was going to be in Wynberg on that day anyway, so we arranged it that she picked me up on Main Road from where we'd drive through to Mowbray where she'd worked. A few days earlier, before the offer to pay had come, Leonora had, jokingly I'd thought suggested that we go for drinks if she got what she wanted from her ex-employer. On the way to Mowbray she broached the subject again, seeing as how the matter had been almost successfully completed. I was surprised that Leonora actually intended going through with the drinks suggestion and I said yes and we agreed to do it that following Friday evening.

 

The Issue of the Forward Client (as I thought of Leonora) puzzled me to a degree. Granted that my brutally handsome matinee idol good looks, intelligence, wit, charm and raw animal sexuality might have impressed the hell out of her, not to mention my successively more forceful letters to her ex-employer's representatives, culminating in threats of merciless legal action, that resulted in us going to collect the salary cheque, might have made me a desirable drinks companion in her eyes, but I was still a little uneasy with the concept of actually going out and socialising with an (ex) client. I've done it exactly three times before. The first time it resulted in a six month relationship that broke up due to circumstances, the second time the jealous boyfriend walked in just as we were having coffee and I had the feeling that I'd been a pawn in that particular game and the last time (10 years earlier) it was a short, sharp shock of a scene that ended about as abruptly as it began. Since then I'd kept a strict distance.

 

It was probably a bit far fetched to think that Leonora wanted to pay me in kind (I've always thought that kindness particularly a perk of divorce lawyers) and my guess was that she possibly just wanted to get out a little. The one thing I did not know, and did not ask about, is why exactly she's a single mother (I mean, I knew why she was a mother, but not why she was single) -- and this was a convenient excuse for her.

I doubted that she was my type, or I hers, and she was a bit young too. Loved her voice though. Well-educated, melodious, sweet but not pukka.

And she was the kind that used trendy abbreviations in text messages. Cute, no? No.

The following examples of SMS "dialogue" on the day of the drinks date are reproduced completely accurately.

 

BEFORE: LATE AFTERNOON

My mother wants 2 know what Star sign u r?I 4got 2 ask u?

Aries. Is this important?

Ha!Ha!C u laterrr.!

 

The goods news was that Leonora declared that she thought I'm "too good for this world" and "so Special" and "DA SWEETEST EVA". You guessed it; the latter was yet another text message. Leonora likes her red wine chilled, smokes Peter Stuyvesant Blue, said she doesn't take drugs or approve of them, believes in a non-denominational God, is an excellent catcher of fish, is a Pisces, talked a lot, is probably quite bossy yet curiously sweet and naïve with it, was impressed that I knew where Calabria is (that's the part of Italy she hails from; her father used to own a beach there), likes to dance, is a healer and medium, is in fact not a natural blonde, claimed to have almost no friends left and insisted that the father of her child is just about completely absent from her life and she's made no effort to claim maintenance from him (yet).

Seeing as how she was 26 - jeez, I could be her father and, utterly, totally scarifying, Leonora's mother is just 4 years older than me - and further seeing as how she hadn't been out in a while, Leonora wanted to go to a place with music "in the background". I took charge in a sophisticated older guy kind of way by suggesting that we go to Café Bardeli since it was sure to have some kind of music and some relatively chic young Capetonians. It used to be the hippest of the hip places but is now at best at the bottom of the Premier Division, maybe top of the First League, but it's close by my home. Leonora arrived in a very nifty, white 2000 model BMW -- not actually her car, which was a metallic coloured oriental product. Leonora's version was that one of her Italian cousins was coming out from the old country to visit to the Dark Continent and sent her R160 000 to buy him a set of wheels for his holiday use. He was due to arrive in about 6 weeks' time and in the meanwhile Leonora zipped around in it though she had trouble parking it. As soon as we'd parked at the Engen service station close to Café Bardelli, and please notice the following very sweet yet blatant manipulation, Leonora handed me a set of mounted studio portraits of her and her baby, a ser of prints she just happened to have in the car. I cooed appreciatively, as one does.

At Bardelli we found a comfy couch near the DJs (yes, real live DJs who spun platters all night long) and I started off with a shaken and not stirred Martini and thereafter graduated to my good friend Jack Daniel's fine product for the rest of the night. Leonora stuck to her chilled red wine throughout.

The music was so loud that I could barely hear myself talk and I soon developed a bit of a hoarse voice. Fortunately Leonora had so much to say that for the most part I got away with smiling enigmatically and nodding my head. Some of what Leonora said did penetrate through the aural fog but a significant amount of information and opinion passed me by. As the evening progressed we moved closer to each other, perhaps in both senses, and there was even some light touchy-feely stuff. The scariest part was when she told me that she knew at our first meeting that I believed in nothing – a retort apropos my declaration that I didn't believe in God - and when she said that she could sense I have a wound on the left side of my body. As it happens there is a crescent shaped operation scar in that very locality. Oh, and it was very scary that she twice said that I was too good for this world. At that point it didn't seem like a good idea to enquire as to the exact meaning of this averment.

While Leonora was chattering and I was smiling and nodding, not quite catching all she was telling me, I did this writer's thing where I tried to observe the scene from a distance and to imagine how I would write about it. Maybe this meant that there was no sexual magnetism. Quite feasible. I was getting pleasantly pissed and feeling all warm and benevolent but there was stirring of the old fleshly desire type of thing.

We left Bardelli at about 01h00 and Leonora dropped met outside my block of flats. I didn't invite her up to my place for coffee. Leonora actually asked whether we'd see each other again. Quite touching. Of course I intimated that I would love to see her again and in the heat of the moment I might have well have believed it too.

I guess it was a successful evening. I paid strict attention to Leonora, plenty of full body eye contact. Not too difficult, she's pretty enough. She wore black pants that were tight to the knees and then flared out, with long slits up the sides, all the way up, with crisscross laces to keep her decent, and a black CK top, with a black jacket over this, and black stack heeled shoes. I guessed that she wanted to appear slimmer than she thought she was and that she wanted to gain some height. It was a curious mixture of high fashion sexuality and a slightly off kilter concept of what is sexy, somewhat low rent disco slut chick. Only the sweetness leavened the effect – and the fact that Leonora was a tad too plump to pull the look off with complete success.

The only slight bitchiness that popped into view came about when I was distractedly staring at something in the distance, and there happened to be a young woman standing there in my line of vision and Leonora made some pointed remark about this other person's "nice ass" and when I asked what she was talking about Leonora pointedly remarked that she could see that I was staring at the "nice ass." Well, then I did give the ass in question close scrutiny, to see what she was going on about. It was a cute donkey. In fact Bardelli was full of attractive young people. When I told Loren how old I was, she was acted surprised, said she hadn't thought of me as old. I would like to know how old she thought I was but stupidly I didn't ask. Her flattery was life enhancing despite my follically challenged head, which she allegedly saw as sign of great intelligence. It seemed impertinent under the circumstances to point out that baldness also denotes great virility - so I've been told.

Leonora had to drive all the way home to Plumstead and I thought it might be a polite gesture of modern manners to send her a text message to give her some comfort on her lonely journey.

 

AFTER: SAME NIGHT

Thanx for the healing. Let me know when you're safely home. X

 

It's a pleasure,I had fun2!Wish u would allow me 2 heal u completely!U r so Special. Xx

XXX

 

XXX XXX

 

The next day I strolled into town for breakfast at the Wimpy in St George's Mall and there, mindful of the requirement of a follow up phone call on the morning after, I sent another brief message.

 

Good morning! Still feeling special. X

 

A little later I was so full of bonhomie and the delights of a few cups of Wimpy coffee that I decided to cal Leonora and when I got hold of her it was raining and I had to skulk underneath an awning and place a hand over my free ear to hear Leonora over the din of the passers-by and the rain drops falling close to my head. We exchanged but a few words when Leonora disappeared off the airwaves and redialling did not alleviate the situation. Leonora could not be contacted. I wondered whether this failure to communicate should be seen as a sign that a long-term relationship was not to be.

 

Therefore I all but gave up on Leonora until later that afternoon when her texting finger ran riot.

 

Sorry my battery vrekked. My mom was cross bcoz I came so late,but shes ok now.She worries bout me driving alone,dangerous,shes rite.Glad u had fun 2.x

 

WARNING: GET URESELEF A BOTTEL OF DOOM CAUSE ANTS ARE ATTACKING ALL THE SWEET THINGS IN LIFE AND I KNOW THEY'RE COMEING 2 U CAUSE URE DA SWEETEST EVA!

 

This last message profoundly disturbed me because it was so over the top to be completely insane in the circumstances of our brief acquaintanceship that Leonora could have been truly that impressed by me and it also showed a deep childishness that was equally disturbing in a 26-year old who'd claimed to have been a financial director at her previous employer but one. I knew Leonora was a lot younger than me but I had not appreciated exactly how young. The eleven year old daughter of my best friend would not have thought of such sickly sweet nothings. My only material response was to attempt to debunk the silliness and to test Leonora's sense of humour.

 

Shouldn't that be sweetest Adam? You're a honey 2. X

 

Sadly Leonora did not respond. My guess was that she did not quite share my sense of humour. I was kind of freaked out by the second text message. Firstly because of the teenage clever-cleverness and general over the top cutesy-poo nature of the beast. It seemed to me that Leonora was perhaps not nearly as emotionally mature as she might have liked me to believe. The second disquieting aspect was the over the top response to a simple, not exactly ecstatically wonderful evening. Of course I am a great guy and a sweet person but Leonora's way of putting it was just too much for my tiny little mind.

 

Obviously the question now was: quo vadis? The last time I'd been out with a 26-year old was when I was merely 9 years older than the woman and at the time that seemed like enough of a gap. Leonora seemed to want to move in very quickly which was fine if she wanted a "fwiend" to take her places, and that kind of companionship thing that one might need if you'd had a lot of time at home because of your new baby. I was not so sure that a "relationship" was a good idea. I was probably the wrong person for her – psychologically-speaking and age-wise - and secondly I'd grown quite fond of living in my own space and at my own pace. The result of the few times I'd shared space is that I'd come to realise I'm too much of a loner to be completely at ease under such circumstances.

Leonora is very sweet and deserves a person who will make a long-term commitment, and I guess that's what she wanted. I was not that person and I was at that stage of my Personal Development where I would prefer just to be good friends with someone I was not going to fall in love with rather than going through the motions where by and by I'd get more and more reluctant to spend time with the person because I had no emotional commitment. Fortunately there was no need to create or sustain an artificial "relationship" because I can stand to be alone.

Incurable romantic, that's me.

Up to the following Tuesday morning I heard nothing more from Leonora and as a result I thought that it was all over. That my smart arse text message had not pleased her. Strangely enough, given my view of the viability of any relationship with Leonora, this lack of response made me feel quite despondent. In a grim mood I caught the train to Wynberg to conduct some legal business there. On the way I got a call from Margaret whom I'd trying to get hold of all weekend to share the interesting new developments. She and her new boyfriend had been away for the weekend and now she had tick bite fever all over again, he was full of flu. The main reason she'd phoned was because they'd run across a small Karoo farm which was to be sold at an insolvency auction the next day and she was madly keen on buying it. I briefly shared my news about Leonora and Margaret agreed that it was one strange situation. Once my business had been concluded I had coffee with Kim who, at age forty, was pregnant for the first time from a guy who lived in Durban and, from her account, sounded crazy. Kim, with whom I had a "scene" for about two years, said she expected me to be the kid's godfather and perhaps even perform additional fatherly duties, seeing as how the biological father would probably be more or less permanently absent from the child's life. My response was a cautious and conditional yes.

Afterwards I returned to Wynberg station to catch the train back. As I walked to my intended carriage I walked straight past my bete noire, Karen, the woman with whom I'd had a very long, stupid situation through most of the Nineties. I hadn't spoken to Karen since the day after the general elections in 1999 when I for the first time, finally told her that our paths had irrevocably parted. I'd seen her once from a distance since then but had never spoken to her again. Even then we exchanged no words, just walked past each other. I was so surprised that there was just no time anyhow. So, why at this particular point in time would I run into her of all people? Weird enough to make my day, already.

Okay, later in the morning I got an SMS from Leonora. She hadn't responded before because she had no airtime but wanted to "meet later." We agree that she would pick me up at the office after work. At about 17h00 she phoned to say that she was on her way and would I mind if her baby Mirella, her mother Mirella and the mother's boyfriend Hannes came along too? What could I say? They collected me and we ended up at an Italian place at the top end of Kloof Street, called Baccini's, quaffing Nederburg Baronne (Hannes's best red wine), eating a little supper and generally sussing each other out.

How's this? The second "date" and my future mother in law came with! That is what amused me endlessly and weirded me out - okay the red wine helped - the apparent assumption that Leonora and I were going to be some kind of a permanent thing. "You can have your honeymoon in Calabria," Mirella senior suggested. Leonora didn't yet want me to pick up baby Mirella, because "she must get used to your voice, she'll be nervous because you're a stranger." Mirella senior enquired after my eating habits and preferences and told me of the wonderful meal she'd cook me when I came to dinner. About the only counter blow I got in was to confess that I was not the romantic person suggested by my star sign,

Johnny Winter has a song called "Hustled Down In Texas" and it kept coming into my head, except it was the variation called "Hustled Up In Kloof Street."

I know I'm a fabby dabby person, but it's not often that one is co-opted into the family so quickly and summarily. It's like the Cape Muslims. If you date one of their daughters, you'd better be serious about marrying her.

Later that night I had to phone Margaret who could only say that for once I had utterly outweirded her. I explained about Leonora's apparent lack of a sense of humour and brittleness, and the problem with the Pisces bossiness. M's advice was either to fuck the woman for as long as I could stand her company (that is, get while the getting is good) or sit her down to enquire from her whether I was correct in thinking that I was a target in this single minded quest to find a step-daddy for baby Mirella.

Anyhow, I was feeling absolutely giddy with the joy of the ridiculous chutzpah of it all. Was this really happening? Was I suddenly in some outrageously weird alternative universe?

At 23h20 that night Leonora texted me.

Hope u enjoyed our evening with us.My mother likes u a lot,me2.Slep well.Sorry im writing so late.Xx

Had fun! Glad I was okay. Sweet dreams.

 

Leonora replied at 23h25.

    I just saw a smartie advert and thought of u,coz u're cute, colourful, devine and very sweet! WOTALOTUGOT!!!

U 2

 

Had this woman not progressed beyond the age of 16? How could I possibly take the risk of fucking her, even just once?

Sometimes I just love my life. And it was not as if I were some smooth Casanova type with dozens of notches on his bedpost, far from it. My planets must have been in some weird congruence/confluence/alignment.

Why me, Lord, what have I ever done, to deserve even one …

I just want to do a sanity check here. The following is the next SMS from Leonora, sometime during Wednesday morning.

Twist ur mind!dis is cute:I+opposite of W+initial of ICE+twice da letter b4T+ 3/4 of X+15th letter+1/2 O ...text me if you've figured it out. :)

Was I the kind of person who would be hugely amused, titillated and otherwise impressed by this sort of thing, to the extent that I would fall madly in love/lust with the sender?

Would I be a hopeless non-romantic if this cute message gave rise to pause rather than applause?

I felt like the little boy who went down to the beach to paddle in the shallow water and got bowled over by a freak wave.

Of course I deciphered the message but once again my quirky sense of humour got the better of me, after I'd written the decoded message down in one single word, "IMISSYOU",and the following was my reply.

 

    I'm a shoe?    

 

Once again, Leonora did not respond, either because my reply baffled her or she had no airtime and for the next few days until Friday night, there was no further contact between us. I had vaguely promised to phone her again, to make arrangements for the weekend but as time passed and I gave the matter more and more considered thought I felt it my gut that it would be foolish to go on seeing Leonora, to attempt to build a relationship of some sort. She seemed to have her eye on more than friendship and I was not keen at all on the prospect of working at a relationship with this type of starry-eyed immaturity. I could foresee that it would not work out and my very real anticipation of Leonora's short-term goal was to move in with me, to form a little nuclear family with baby Mirella and the last thing I was interested in at that time was to share my flat with anybody, much less a young woman with whom I could not see much common ground and who would be bossing me about in a very short time once she's settled in.

 

The sensible, adult thing would have been to phone Leonora, maybe have one last drink with her, and to explain to her that, nice and pretty as she was, there was no sense in pursuing the mirage of a possible relationship and that if she indeed wanted more than mere friendship she should not waste her time and energy on me. I have not often been known to do the adult, sensible thing and Margaret was not available to advise me on the best course of action and as a result I did what I was good at, nothing. I ignored Leonora.

 

Late Friday night she sent me this SMS to which I still did not respond.

So,u 4got me quickly.

 

The weekend passed and on Sunday night Leonora texted for the last time.

So,u did 4get me.

You'll note that she no longer compared me with any kind of sweet.