WANDA HENNIG
Say Yes Press
First published in paperback and eBook 2015 This revised paperback and eBook edition published in 2017 Copyright Š 2015 by Wanda Hennig All rights reserved. Quote from The Joy of Living: Unlocking the Secret & Science of Happiness by Yongey Rinpoche Mingyur and Eric Swanson; foreword by Daniel Goleman; used with permission Penguin Random House. Wanda Hennig has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identiďŹ ed as the Author of this work. No responsibility for loss caused by any individual or organization acting on or refraining from action as a result of the material in this publication can be accepted by Say Yes Press or the author. ISBN 978-0-9968205-2-3 eBook ISBN 978-0-9968205-3-0 1. Self-Help / Self-Esteem 2. Personal Memoirs Cover and design direction: Debbi Murzyn Layout: Jo Marwick Cover drawing: Pascale Chandler, Mielie, ink on paper Say Yes Press
To the many special people who—often unknowingly—have added an indelible mark and given me reason to feel grateful.
TaBLE OF COnTEnTs Chapter One
Foreplay | 1
Chapter Two
Groping in the Dark |9
Chapter Three
Honey Don’t | 13
Chapter Four
Turned On and Tuned In | 19
Chapter Five
All Fired Up | 27
Chapter six Chapter seven
Fatal Distraction | 33 Spliced | 41
Chapter Eight
Getting Forked | 49
Chapter nine
The Devil Made Me Do It | 57
Chapter Ten
Egg-stacy | 67
Chapter Eleven
Dying for It | 75
Chapter Twelve
Interruptus | 83
Chapter Thirteen
The Big O | 91
Chapter Fourteen
Master Stroke | 97
Chapter Fifteen
On Giving Good Ear | 103
Chapter sixteen
Lady Madonna | 115
Chapter seventeen Chapter Eighteen
What’s Your Pleasure? | 123 Afterglow: A Visualization | 131
C H a P T E r On E
FOREPLAY
P
aris with Helen starts as a nightmare. She wants to shop, shop, shop. I hate to shop but I want to be accommodating. Thing is, I’ve been to Europe before, a couple of times. It’s her first visit. Plus, she’s the cousin of my husband. The husband I’m meeting in London in a week’s time. The husband under whose pillow I found a woman’s nightie a week before he left, and I left, on our respective trips, him to the U.S. first, for work— something to do with computers—and me to Paris first, with Helen. A vacation from my job as a newspaper reporter in Durban, South Africa, and a break from being the mom of a cool daughter busy mastering the challenges of life in Grade 2. Frumpy and sort of maiden-aunt homely the nightie was, I thought at the time, before I watched my mind run through: “Oh, he’s having an affair. “Good grief! “New territory. “How am I supposed to respond to this? “Affair? Guidelines? 1 | Foreplay
“Yes, you wanted to leave him. “Yes, now you have grounds. You can blame him.” Oops! I watch my mind quickly hit delete; censor the tiny twinge of gloat and “gotcha, you bugger!” satisfaction. “Don’t rationalize,” it tells me. “This is not the time to be calm and philosophical. “Better to throw toys out of the pram. Have a tantrum.” Both of which I duly do.
So anyway, now I know this is going to be our one and only time in Europe, him and me together. Which backstory I include to give a context to Helen, who I have traveled from South Africa with and who I’m spending my first five days with, staying on the outskirts of Paris, the last stop on the Métro line, with friends of her folks. I like Helen. I like her parents. I might be planning to divorce her cousin. But I don’t want to divorce the part of his family I like and who like me. Hence my desire to be accommodating. Which, then and now, is a tiresome tendency I can have.
When, finally, the time comes to head to Montmartre to have a bite, a glass of wine and listen to an accordion player, I am shopped out. I want to strangle Helen. Alternatively, jump off the Pont Neuf and drown myself. So on Day Two, I say to Helen: “Let’s split up and meet at 7 p.m.”
2 | Cravings
Helen isn’t keen. She’s nervous to be alone in Paris. But sensing this is non-negotiable, she agrees. Thus it is that we meet as planned, after dark, in the Pigalle.
The Pigalle? The red light district? Two women in their twenties? Not hookers?
OK. So Helen and I are in Paris back in the dark ages. That is, before South Africa’s first democratic elections. It was an era when white supremacy in the form of apartheid ruled, Nelson Mandela was still in jail and many things were verboten, including pictures of him, any opposition to the thengovernment and, pertinent to this story, almost anything to do with sex. Much happened covertly, as you might imagine. A Miss Nude South Africa, for example—the jump-on-thebanned-wagon scheme of a used car salesman with friendly teeth (a smiley space between the front two). For a few short years it was an annual event in the tiny landlocked kingdom of Lesotho, the just-across-the-border destination for many South Africans drawn to porn, gambling and other “prohibitions.” And similar but more discreet, the strip show set up by an artist with a sense of humor and a penchant back then for sleaze and Jack Daniels. He organized it as a fund-raiser for the rugby club in the farming community spread around the rural hamlet of Winterton in KwaZulu-Natal.
3 | Foreplay