boys of Capetown

Posted by Kabby on Tuesday, May 30 2000 at 06:17:17pm

a boy called buzz

It was too hot to go to the beach much before late afternoon and by then we had company. Little Ross and his sisters had been playing all afternoon in the lawn sprinkler. We asked them if they wanted to come to the beach and they said yes.

Ross, is the perfect 6 year old. Lithe, wriggly and full of mischievous fun. We played happily in the large swells fed by the south winds. He wanted endlessly to splash me and throw sand up at me. I hugged his little sunbrowned energy close the few times he really wanted to be lifted rich with the privilege. The older children splashed happily out in the breakers and on their body boards and I know they thought it strange that I loved it there with Ross in the shallows. For a while we were joined by a little wet-suited 10 yr old with raven dark hair. At the beach with his mom and auntie who smoked gaulloise in the small sedan in the car park - he was lonely. So many boys were lonely at the beach today. He asked me where we were going when we crawled back up the beach towards our towels and then if we were going out. I reassured him, no we weren't. Where was he from, France he said proudly. His wetsuit showed him to have a little podgy belly but what you really noticed was the gold in his eyes.

But Ross had had enough and wanted to dry off. The wind was stronger and whipping up the sand. We went to find the towels up by the car and he leant into me so that I could towel him off. I felt strangely parental then. I would have happily tended this mite all day given even a fraction of a chance. The others laughed at me but I shrugged this off.

In the showers my 13 yr old asked if I liked Ross more than him. He hasn't shown any signs of jealousy for years and I reassured him quickly. But he likes the little fellow too so this was easy.

After ice creams we played on the swings for a while. The children all played tag happily for ages. I was struck by the quiet little blond boy who seemed to live on the roundabout. He seemed motionless there. I wondered if he spoke any of our languages. The children raced around screaming excitedly tagging one another while he stood there rotating endlessly on the machine as if he couldn't get off. He had long fair hair, whipped into thick tassles by the wind. He wore surfer shorts and a spiderman teeshirt. He was hopelessly beautiful with deep set coral blue eyes and a cheeky grin.

On the multi-seater seesaw I sat on one end while three of the children balanced me off. I was still heavier. It was fun that game. Suddenly I was aware of a small brown figure climbing up next to me. It was the lonely blond boy. Then Ross joined us as well and we were three men together on my side and four giggly big girls on the other. Up and down we went laughing loudly and trying to bump the girls. I asked him his name. Buzz he said. short for Sebastian. Aged 8. I introduced Buzz to my group and encouraged them to include him in their play. After a while they did but he always seemd an outsider. By now I was his friend and he came now and then to sit with me and leaned into me out of the wind. Then he started talking to me quietly and earnestly. He lived with his mom, his parents were getting divorced. His dad was over there in the beachside bar. I think he had been there all afternoon. I guess it was Buzz' afternoon with dad.

We had to go at seven. Buzz looked sad and forlorn there back in his lonely post on the roundabout. How I wish I could have taken Buzz home with us.

Somehow we were all touched by Buzz. We spoke of him several times at our evening barbecue, this angelic gentle beautiful child whose world was falling apart.


Brad looks great!

We were having a barbecue up in the mountains and my brother invited some of his colleagues. A late new millenium party...

Some people make lovely babies. This couple had three of them. The oldest was Bradley aged 8. He was a young Kurt Russell (think "Follow me Boys") Bradley was stunning, the archetypal blond with long hair honey blond at the roots but bleached into white strands on the edges....

I left the company of the adults and went to the reservoir with the kids. The brown peaty water was blood temperature in the midsummer heat. The boys loved it.

I think they played up there in the lake in that secret valley up in the granite mountains for about 3 hours. Bradley swam in his Spiderman undies. The boy was even more gorgeous revealed. I had thought him slightly podgy in his clothes but no it was muscle, he was shaped like a greek boygod. His skin toasted almost to chocolate brown by the sun was covered in a fine blond down that made it look like the skin on a peach. Every muscle in his body was rounded and perfect. His personality matched his body. He was 100% boy and then maybe some. Loved lifting rocks, ever bigger from the peaty depths and then hurling them back over his shoulders to make satisfying splashes in the still water. Was delighted with the thick black oozy mud up by the spring and coated himself in its treacly excess running round scaring the others with satisfying whoops. Oh yes and somehow keeping his undies mudfree which meant holding them in an even tighter bunch with his hand showing an extra sacred inch of thigh.

The men at the party missed me. They came with their beers to stand awkwardly at the water's edge reminiscing about their own boyhoods, half-aware perhaps. Pot-bellied beery men unused to seeing one another out of the office. When it was time to go they called the boys up out of the water with the promise of towels. Brad was the last to leave wrapping himself partly in a grey tattered towel that had once been white. He dried slowly sweeping his long blond hair back over his head so that it seemd
to be gelled flat there. This was an improbably romantic image. The men paused in their drying to marvel at the same sight that held me spellbound. One bald ageing man said breathlessly, "Boy, Brad looks great!" There was a silence among them. Brad smiled shyly. Then the group assented as if all releasing their breath together in a whoosh.. "Yeah! he REALLY does" Four rugby playing middle-aged businessmen on a mountain barbecue with their tinsel and opaque wives saw what I see every minute of every day of my life. It was a rich eternal moment up there in Pan's kingdom.



An unusual child

he walked along the pavement spinning lightly on his toes and making a cocoon around himself. As he exhaled the weave grew thicker. he made it with the air as it left his mouth. He whispered magic words that made it all happen.

He stroked secret signs on the walls with his fingers as he went past. Ciphers rich with mysticism and power. Crosses and stars and other holy marks. He blessed the bricks and the stones and the metal traffic signs. The trees bordering the road received his touch. Deep inside his mind the child acknowledged all living beings, held communion with his history and drawing air in and holding it in his chest became both a little dizzy and master of the universe.

Reaching the waste ground he paused. The air around him was hot and still. Things that grew on the waste ground surrendered perfume to his nostrils. Small insect-noises startled his nerves and drew him down to the ground. He started looking at the stones that had been left by the builders. Turned them over one by one slowly as if looking for gold or diamonds. As he worked his tongue crept out between his lips, like a little pink worm.

The drumming noise in his head was getting stronger. It sounded like creeping thunder or maybe like rain in the desert, hot thick drops of rain pounding down on the dusty soil. A million little things stirred into life and joined the orchestra playing tribal rythms in his head. The noise became a river then a flood washing the dark and sticky sound over the child. The noise became a sea crashing down on him. He began to drown in that noise that was like a tidal wave breaking over him. He threw out his arms and grabbed at the air. He waved his arms about frantically as if swimming, trying to pull himself up to the silent surface again.

He skimmed a round flat stone at a thornbush and missed it. He scuffed the sour figs with his sandal. Thick white sap seeped into his socks and in between his toes. He stretched himself up reaching as high as his arms would go. Clouds scudded past, thin, high whispy clouds. Impatient busybody clouds in a hurry to go somewhere. Too fine to have shapes, he watched the clouds jitter and twist in the high altitudes. He locked his fingers and stared at the sky through the little diamond shapes they made. He was hungry. It was time to go and get something to eat. He threw another stone this time at nothing and satisfied with his impact on that place turned on his heels and went back down the road.