-- Eddie Cantor
Not that I want a grave but if I had one the epitaph should be ‘Three weddings and one funeral’. There has been three weddings and no funeral so far. The first started and ended on Mauritius. He was a Boer from Bloemfontein and I was an impressionable 19 year old from Greytown.
I was not too impressed when he on the night of the honeymoon pulled out a tube of penis desensitising cream from his beauty box. It was still the early days of my sexual sophistication and it freaked me out a bit.
The next day it was time for him to freak out over me tanning topless on the white beaches of Club Med. A clash of the titans started. Then there was the incident of the red mini dress. He wouldn’t let me wear it and subsequently carried me to the bathroom where he threw me in the bathtub to wet the dress so that I could’t wear it. The dress was of course even more sexy after that. Water does that to dresses.The honeymoon went down the drain together with the bath water.
Back in South Africa I started to make plans to end the alliance. I hated his flat which was furnished in all the shades of brown known to mankind and I couldn’t wait to get out of there. When I fetched my lipstick, a shade of pink, and a few other last possessions, my sister stuck the penis cream on the outside of his front door.
The last time I saw husband number one was when he gave me and Valerie, a fellow student and my best friend from Addington Hospital, a lift to Greytown. He was moving to Bloemfontein where he was going to live happily ever after with his mother. We said goodbye and I cried crocodile tears. Finally we saw the tail lights of his Mazda 323 disappearing around the street corner and Valerie, my sister and I held hands and danced with joy. I was the happiest 19 year old divorcee on earth. Then I turned into the most embarrassed 19 year old on earth when we saw the front of his Mazda 323 appearing again. We froze like the proverbial deer in front of headlights. He had forgotten the wedding ring which he was going to give to his mother. I never saw him again. The engagement ring was sold to Valerie and I used the money to finance a philosophy course at UNISA. Blood money.
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| Still wearing red mini dresses |
Mooi boots ...
ReplyDeleteJy moet lees, nie prentjies kyk nie...
DeleteAnd the engagement ring has lived happily on my left ring finger for the past 27 years...
ReplyDeleteAnd I get to ski in close vicinity of it almost every year.
DeleteTrek eers die boots uit - dit trek my aandag af. Is jy seker jou wittebrood was in Mauritius? Klink my dit was eerder in 'n WWE-stoeikryt.
ReplyDeletePerhaps the most alarming lack of sexual sophistication is the memorable incident with the Tampon when you in your not so blissful ignorance limped to the KJA (Afrikaans for Church youth action) with the entire tampon insertion package stuck up your major reproductive organ. In Greytown there was a morbid fear that a Tampon might damage your hymen which would unleash the wrath of god and your new husband on the honeymoon night. The KJA was also where you met husband number one. There is an interesting link of plastic between husband number one and two (one of my favorite scenes in “The Graduate” includes a dialogue about plastic, but I digress). A plastic bag was used as a prophylactic during your first sexual encounter with number one and transporting the product of your sexual encounter with number two home after giving birth.
ReplyDeleteMost certainly the disturbing element in the flat was the shades of brown only to be complimented by a strong smell of decay…His mother baked cookies every Christmas to last him a year and these cookies became very ripe indeed as the year progressed.
The penis desensitizing cream was called “STUD” – very optimistic and revolting I thought, at this point my 15 year old Greytown sexual sophistication thoroughly updated (in theory) by my married/divorced sister.
The last time we saw him was not at the deer in headlight moment – that moment was even more embarrassing because I lit candles and we were dancing around candles to celebrate the end of that brief and volatile union when he re – entered the room.
The last time we saw him was 4 years later in Bloemfontein – our car broke down on the way to Cape Town and we spend the night giggling hysterically in the Nuptial bed bought by his mother to accommodate the happy couple in the years to come. I can imagine him now, age 56 his purple-red face (at age 25 he loved his whiskey) muddy brown eyes and distasteful red and grey mustache STILL making monthly payments towards the honeymoon in Mauritius.