Annesu de Vos debuteer in 1980 op 16-jarige ouderdom met die digbundel Gebed van ’n groen perske. Sy studeer aan die Universiteit van die Witwatersrand, maar verlaat die land weens haar man se dienspligweiering voor sy haar studie kon voltooi. Sy werk vryskut in Kanada, waar sy sedertdien woon.

A True Professional

Annesu de Vos

Our first time has to be so special, it must be like nothing else we have ever experienced. It must glitter. It has to have the right production values: backdrop, music, candles, perfume, flowers, champagne, fireplace, lingerie. Our first time has to have scenery, outside and within. Something like the best scenes in Days of Our Lives when Bo or Austin really work at laying a trip on Hope or Carrie.

It cannot be like any of my other times. It cannot be like my first and last time with my oppressed sweetheart on the fourth floor of the Biblical Studies Subject Support Room in Senate House, roughly around 6 p.m. after all the other students had left for the day. Some highly satisfying Biblical knowledge was acquired quite hastily on a scratchy carpet covering an extremely hard floor, in the presence of witnesses from the astral world inhabiting the empty chairs and making notes for submission to the Karmic Board (those guys who ask, after you die, what the hell it was you thought you were doing with your life). Making notes rather sternly as we went for it in the missionary position, woman flat on floor, with most of our clothes still on.

This runs contrary to every good sex advisor’s sex advice in every good sex column. It was bad bed manners and unimaginative too, to do it like that, with clothes on, and in such a redundant position. The only possible excuse you could devise for such bad bed manners is that there was no bed in the room. I have always had this fantasy about beds in public places, discreet little bedrooms everywhere, in shopping malls, in universities, in airports, in office buildings, and even on street level for the poor. One would pop in a loonie, or a R5 coin if in South Africa, and get a key from a municipal key-dispensing machine, and unlock the little room hiding in the alleyway, which would wait there peripherally, prepared with neatly starched sheets provided by the municipality; and these rooms, scattered all over the city, would double up as shelters for the homeless of course, with municipal workers on their rounds to replace the sheets on a regular basis.

Look at the jobs this would create, and the increase in productivity: highly sexed people could get rid of whatever it is that is bothering them, and then continue to work with clearer minds. Corporations, financial institutions and universities could provide more elegant accommodations. You could even leave the queue at the bank if you should get too frustrated there. People with high sex drives could then quickly and easily consummate whatever excruciating passions distract them in the course of a working day. If your secretary causes you to stumble, do not cut her off or pluck her out of her steady job. It may be the only job she has. Do not sit there uncomfortably fighting your erection under your desk. Take her to The Room instead.

A whole social manoeuvring thing would evolve: etiquette, rituals around The Room. You would casually sidle up to her desk, saying, “I wonder if The Room is booked today  ... can you check for me?” It would be terribly bad form to add a word like “honey”, “darling” or “sweetie”. You would do this in an extremely businesslike, but totally sexy way. And if she states that there is a time slot available, you would instruct her to book it, and indicate in a completely matter-of-fact fashion that you would require her to be there.

And what, you ask yourself, about the secretary who refuses, on account of any excuse other than periods (for which you would keep a discreet calendar so that the issue would not arise in the ordinary course of business)? Don’t even think it. Let’s not even discuss it. I’m not a lawyer.

I bet you any money any number of people have secretly harboured thoughts identical to these. But these thoughts will never become manifest in reality. People are just too uptight for that.

All I can tell you is that such a room with key-dispensing machine would have come in damn handy on that day. Knowing my old school, however, the vending machine would, of course, not have worked and we would have ended up in the Biblical Studies Subject Support Room anyway.

We tore at each other and acquired this knowledge, only to discard it the next day in favour of more sober world views, as we still had to face each other in Philosophy tutorials afterwards. I was not the one who had a problem with it.

It cannot be like my countless times with working class heroes in crazy apartments with empty containers from Steers or Pizza Nova, beer bottles sitting around, bugs, niche marketing experts, huddling together in musty corners, thinking I cannot see them, observant, observant, they and I. My friend the microbiologist, when he went crazy in Kensington Market from too much dagga, once thought that an ad in the medical section of the Globe and Mail careers page contained a hidden message for him when it called for an observant person. Observant, Bob’s servant, he said, and thought that a guy named Bob might be watching.

“Am I crazy?” he asked me, confidentially.

“Yes,” I answered, softly. “But do not tell anyone under any circumstances. Your secret is safe with me.”

It cannot be like any of the times when I waited patiently in the Devonshire on a Friday afternoon for my lover from the struggle to finish his fifteenth whiskey while still standing and still shooting straight at pool, only to stagger out of there late in the night, leaning on me, so that I could guide him to Mayfair. How we got there I cannot remember. I was probably a designated driver.

It cannot be like the nights when I comforted him, stroking his back with the Neil Aggett lashes, guiding him into me to explode as quickly as possible, just so that he could sleep, just so that he could get rid of another Friday’s anguish. Policemen used to look at us in the car when we drove in broad daylight. They used to look through my car window because technically speaking it was still illegal in those days, but only in a sense that would earn you looks. No heroic feats of climbing up balconies or hanging from the trees outside his house in Mayfair.

It was always like this, for me. It was always conducted in a haphazard way, because none of us ever had any time or money. There was never any set or backdrop to speak of in our productions. Coming to think of it, I have never even been on a real honeymoon.

We used to giggle together, the girls in the Movement, about those Afrikaner boys. What delicious politically incorrect choices we would make, left to our own devices! My friend the Tamil tease with the high-pitched ironic chortle — she in particular would never miss an opportunity to remind me of how much I denied my lust for someone like you. “But they all have to go to the army,” I said. “I cannot risk that. I do not dare go with a white man.”

When I went with the future people’s lawyer, she said that he was an opportunist, socially, emotionally, sexually, politically, intellectually and nutritionally. In reality he really only was a transportational opportunist. “Ja, want jy is mos ’n wit liberaal met ’n kar,” another friend remarked, and laughed. I laughed. What could I do? Deny it?

When I went with Rajiv, she didn’t approve. She told me he would mess me up, and he duly did. Took me for one night by the side of Zoo Lake, and the following morning casually dumped me in the canteen — activist is not to be seen with a white woman, he said. Not good form. He left. I cried in my chips and gravy, and got over it by the time I got up. Like a strong woman.

“I like my women the way I like my coffee, black sweet and strong,” Devesh had said, winking at his girlfriend Divya. I was mindful of this.

Did I say before that I wanted you to take me like a virgin? Dash hypocrisy.

I want you to take me like a highly paid whore, the kind of whore who is taken along on extended business trips, at least ten days at a time, by extremely successful businessmen. The kind of whore who renders only the most exceptional quality service, and who does not argue about kissing. There is not a single sexual thing that you can think of, that you want done, that such a whore would dare deny you. They all claim that they do not kiss because kissing signifies love. That is not the real reason, I promise you, but I will not go into it.

There has got to be the kind of whore who virtually specializes in extreme French kissing, and that specific whore is the one I want to be.

You can invent a name for me as your whore. Any name that pleases you, as long as it is not too common among whores. Like, how many hookers are there, practising at this moment on the planet earth, named Jade? This is the type of question to which God only knows the answer, and which He cannot divulge even to the most adept of adepts, for the good and sufficient reason that He simply will not do that. That is the type of question that limits us adepts. That is God’s way of staying in control of all the whores. He alone counts them.

It has to shine, our first time. Shine like a scene in a soap with good production values and a decent production budget. And I still cannot get away from the image of snow, the incredible sparkles on the snow at night here, something you must see, more glorious than the glitter on the snow in Europe, because it is colder here.

There is a certain kind of crisp powdery snow that scatters like diamonds underfoot. I still think a snowed-in mountain cabin has got to be the ultimate thing.

We will go there on the night you arrive, directly from the airport by airport limousine. An incredibly expensive ride, but this is our first time, this is not a time to pinch pennies. When I come to fetch you at the airport, I will wear my slinky black winter coat, sharp on the shoulders, hugging my figure, and black leather boots with high heels. I will have my hair done high up, and I will have striking make-up on, but not too much. I’m telling you now so that you will be sure to recognize me, because I will not look one little bit like my left-wing past. I will look like an extremely professional professional. The truly professional ones dress like businesswomen, you know. You would never say it, to look at them, except that they are gorgeous, of course. And who would dare even think of accusing a businesswoman of being one, just because she is?

When you see me for the first time we will smile and look brazenly in each other’s eyes, we will not be one bit shy, and you will put down your suitcases and you will take me in your arms and kiss me, kiss your beautiful whore. Kiss me as if I am your property, which I am. I am a one-man whore.

I will, of course, start by asking about your flight. You will tell me about the turbulence, and then we will talk to each other, gently, comfortably, like old friends, as if we have known each other for thousands of years, which we have. I will ask you if you would like something to eat at the airport before we go, and you will probably say no, you’re okay, because they tend to take very good care of passengers on an Air Canada flight. But if by any chance the thought appeals to you to sit down and have a drink first before we go, and a little snack, we will do so, and sit at the table and talk more and look at each other a lot, smiling a lot, and you will not have to hear how happy I am to see you, because I’m telling you that already, here and now.

You will make a quick phone call on my cell phone to let them know that you arrived safely, and to make sure that they are safe. I will pick at a salad and you  ... let me see  ... you will try something like Poutine. Something completely down to earth like that. Because it is new, and Quebecois. You will have a beer with it, something very ordinary like Molson Export, and I will have a little glass of white wine. And then we will go outside and flag down an airport limo. The Sikh driver will put your suitcases in at the back, and we will sit on the back seat of the limousine, kissing and cuddling and talking softly and intimately, all the way to the mountain resort.

When we arrive there, the driver will help us with your cases. Mine will already be there. Being the Anglo-Saxon manager that I am, I will have already unpacked, made sure that the drinks fridge contains the things you like, and checked with the management on schedules for things to do during the day just in case we get tired of making love. This is a holiday, so we do not have to do anything in particular. And love is never mandatory.

You will go and take a shower first. Then you will unpack while I take a nice hot bath. I will take so long that you will even find time to recline, and do a bit of channel surfing, or tamper with the CD player. Like Bo Brady or Austin you may even light some candles for us. I will emerge from the bathroom wearing a white silk robe, hair loose over my shoulders, and with fresh make-up on, and perfume, subtle, but very, very evening.

Maybe you will have a present for me. Some little piece of jewellery perhaps, which you will put on me to please you with. Around my neck, something that glitters, but not too much. And then you will kiss, and kiss, and kiss me with my breasts squished against your strong beautiful masculine chest. Oh my God, those Afrikaner boys, she used to say, the Tamil tease. Kiss your beautiful whore.

And then you will draw me down on the bed next to you, and strip off the white bath robe, and the black silk underneath, shimmering on my almost unearthly white skin, and I will become undone, gently undone by your expert fingers, until I am naked in your arms, breathing, breathing gently but audibly. You will push me down on the bed and we will slip under the covers, under the crisp sheets. We will lie there, side by side, smiling into each other’s eyes, talking even, if you like talking during sex, which I do, but have never had occasion to do, and you will stroke my hair. And we will kiss again, and you will caress me properly, something I have never experienced before, really, coming to think of it. You will take a long time to touch me all over, to feel every curve, feel me up, touch me dirty, make me feel good and dirty with your probing touch. I will talk dirty for you if you want. Only if you want.

And then you will fuck me, hard and heavy. Like the most beautiful whore you have ever fucked. Fuck me while you shut me up by entering my teasing mouth with your penetrating French tongue.

I’ll be tight for you — it’s a perfect fit you know — I can feel it even at this distance. Oh my God, I will say when we come together for the first time, come like Big Bang.

Oh my God, those Afrikaner boys, she said. The Tamil tease.

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