Chuck V

“For kai

By thine face thou shalt be trusted

By thine gait thou shall be known

Chuck V”

My angels, fate, luck, good energy…whatever it was, were totally on my side again the next night.

I was sitting in my dorm room reading and thought I really should go out and find something to do. I was acutely aware of Johannesburg’s violent reputation, and had listened intently to the girls on the safari talking about their experiences of getting mugged several times in this city. But lying on my bed was not going to make for a good adventure story. Of course, I didn’t actually know where to go or what to do. The only thing that I knew was on was the Out In Africa film festival… it didn’t actually sound like an adventure, but at least I was going to be surrounded by my own kind.

I walked to 7^th street to get a cab, but for the first time on the continent of Africa I couldn’t get one. There were always taxi’s, but for some reason that night, a Friday night, there were none, the only two I saw available didn’t pull over for me. I was going to be early anyway, so I decided I may as well have a pre-film beer. I stopped at the most relaxed looking bar – Xai Xai. I didn’t even know that there was a man sitting at the table behind me until I hear him mumble. After three attempts at ciphering through his Afrikaans accent to deconstruct what the sounds meant, I finally figured out he was saying “come chat”. Without too much hesitation I took the empty seat at the table beside him.

At first I found him, Chuck, a bit reserved and critical and I felt judged by his long silences after I answered his questions as truthfully as I could:

“Why are you here?”

“I just kinda landed here on a whim”

An intimidating silence

“Why are you travelling?”

“Cause I don’t know what else to do with my life and Africa seemed like a good place to think about it”

There was that silence again… though now I started to wonder if it was just a thoughtful pause?

“What did I do in Ghana?”

“Studied people… mostly”

“What is your calling in life?”

“That’s what I’d like to know… I have a bit of a shop-around problem. Always looking for perfection and never, of course, finding it”.

He had a very dry sense of humour and a cynicism I was drawn to.

“What do you do with yourself?” I asked him this time.

“I’m a freelancer… another word for unemployed”

He was a writer. He had only started writing a few years ago, but I guess he had found his calling. The TV show he was translating for wasn’t airing anymore and he lost his main source of income, now he was an avid blogger. I had never read a blog before, and he pulled out his laptop to show me a few of his. I read his three most recent, and although one commented on ‘fat’ women I did think that the rest were very good.

He pointed out the two owners of the bar “they are lesbitarians” he said “… and judging by your gait I would say you are too”. I thought about the night in the Canadian embassy where my ‘gait’ was picked up on straight away. But throughout the rest of Africa, even in the Kruger, it hadn’t crossed people’s mind that I even might be.

He drew something out in me which compelled me to be completely honest with him…

“Actually I don’t really know if I am” I confided.

I told him that I had been dating women for ten years now, but that in the last couple of years I had only found a very small number of women attractive and was instead constantly turned on by men. He asked how old I was.

I told him my theory that because I am an animal, and animals are designed to reproduce (whether they can or not or choose to or not) and I am at reproducing age,  so like all other animals I subconsciously am seeking out someone to mate with, and my animalistic instincts are picking up male pheromones.  He said he was thinking the same thing and that is why he asked my age.

He called over the two bar owners with a similar gait to mine and they joined us with a round of shots. They were outspoken, assertive, animated and funny. He spoke to them in Afrikaans and although I didn’t understand a word I knew he was telling them about my current sexuality dilemma.

Chuck asked where I was staying and then said “keep hanging around these parts and by tomorrow you will have a house to stay in free”.

“By tomorrow!” I replied “you’re a bit ambitious aren’t you!”

Then his friend Rudy came and joined us and within minutes of meeting me he had offered me his spare room. No prompting from chuck, just a flat-out offer. Was Chuck my guardian angel? I accepted through throbbing hesitations. I get shy and anxious in all social situations, especially when I know I will have to be social for extended periods of time. I promised that I would cook for him in return.

One of Chuck’s blogs that I read was titled ‘The Darkie Was Right’, referring to a black man as a ‘darkie’. I asked him if that was PC or offensive. He said he had asked plenty of black people and they were fine with it. We talked about the undeniable racial inequalities in South Africa and he called the (black) waitress over to our table to ask her opinion. She said yes there were racial inequalities but that it was slowly changing.

“Just look over there” she pointed to the semi-full seating area beside us.

“I see!” I said noticing that all of the patrons, except one, were white and all of the staff were black.

“It is good” she said confusing the hell out of me. How is that good? I thought. I looked back again and noticed what it was she had been referring to. At one of the tables, the only black patron was having a romantic dinner with his white date. I saw it now, although it was an anomaly it was also a glimmer of hope.

Chuck suggested we take a walk down 7^th street. “This block and the next block are the ‘darkies’ areas” he said. I peered into all the bars and restaurants on those blocks and he was very clearly right - 90% or more of the people in those bars were dark skinned. We walked down the street further to the ‘whities’ blocks. There 99% of the people in the bars and restaurants were white. Across the road were ‘darkies’ bars again and down the street further ‘whities’ bars.

“Fascinating!” I exclaimed.

I consider Australia to be a very racist country but it’s harder to tell than by just glancing into a café or bar. In Australia you have to read the statistics on health, education and prisons to really see the racial divides. Or maybe not… maybe I am just so used to my home that I can’t see it as clearly as I see it in a new place?

After my lesson in racially social divides we wandered back to Xai Xai where everyone was sufficiently liquored up and dancing around the small bar. In Sydney it would have been considered tacky and trashy, but I thought it was fun and even allowed myself to be pulled up onto the dance floor.

I’m not sure if Chuck just relaxed around me or got drunk, or both, but he told me I have a ‘trusting face’ and that I remind him of Johannes Vermeer's painting Girl With a Pearl earring and at the end of the night he handed me that note:

“For kai

By thine face thou shalt be trusted

By thine gait thou shall be known

Chuck V”

I laughed and I loved it!