Some relationships are clear cut and easy to explain. You are my mother, my friend, my lover. The mechanics and rules inherent to it never change. These types of relationship are predictable, that’s why we need them, but there are some relationships that don’t fall into any one category, blending from one to the other and back again. They are more dangerous than the others but much, much more fascinating.
I spend Sunday sitting with an old friend who is giving my computer an overhaul. I ask him to fix one or two minor things but the more he checks the more he finds and it ends up taking hours. I sit on his bed and watch DSTV whilst he fingers my equipment and stares deeply into my screen.
I’ve known him since I was 15. We met one vacation by the sea and fell crazy in love. It was doomed from the start. He lived in Bloem, I was in Jozi, then he moved to George and I moved to Cape Town. In 2000 he got married and moved to Cape Town and so our relationship changed and grew into a friendship of sorts.
Whilst I went off in search of adventure in the US he got divorced from his wife of 9 years and so for the first time in a long time we now live in the same town and are both single. We’ve both changed, we’re not the same children we were on that beach in 1992, but I can still see the 18 year old boy who didn’t want to go to the army, the rebel, the artist. I can see it in his eyes when he smiles. I can see it when he talks about his kids.
He plays me his favorite music: Paganini, Stef Bos. We drink wine, sit on the porch watching the kittens play with each other on the grass and laugh at their antics. Whilst he upgrades my computer we sling insults around and talk about everything. I remember how in love with him I was at one point of my life, how I cried and yearned for him. I remember going to visit him by bus in Bloemfontein and how I believed he was my destiny. When he’s finally done my laptop is brand new, clean and virus free.
He is not my friend, not my lover, and it's been like that for over 16 years.
A one of a kind relationship.
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