FORTUNATE JWARA

untamed love delusions

i.

She is the most delusional person I know, have met & it has nothing to do with her squinted eye. For one, she believes that feminists will denounce men altogether, especially as spouses. These are people who are fondling every other night, with men. Breaths, theirs? in undistinguishable scents. It is appalling that she spends considerable hours wondering why heterowomen get closer to & marry these men. Her left-eye twitching. She knows this structure of men who only sleep with women & women who only fuck with men stops musings; down- the-line thoughtless about the ways in which men are detrimental. Marriages, partnerships, in lovers, OR listening to his body, living together is just the replica definitions of patriarchal conquest fast- tracked in heteromonogamy. She says giving them children is simply an unexplainable stupidity. Corporate, privatisation. Baby fathers are truly a constant headache. “I had to get law for the father of my son to leave me alone.” She thinks, a woman somewhere is experiencing that as we speak, looking to cleanse her eyes in protection orders. She gets on very long calls with her mother who is 62 years old this year. She sends all the time a please call me. She tells her that activism wanes. She is biased. She enjoys thinking like this about other women, in a negative aesthetic of how women should each time be suspicious of men.

ii.

She is the most beautiful person I know. She is short, not sighted. She hides. She strikes. She isolates. She studies. She is in the shadows. She knows an on & off virtual relation. Crooked teeth & dim from all that smoking. She is telling others & me that she once smoked for 1-year full time whilst dealing with a senseless heartbreak that needed ritualistic prayers to get over & that she ended by accumulating a smoker’s cough. Don’t know why I am right now also a confidant to such details. Of phlegm ready to erupt; direct chest-guns. She narrates the story by saying that she learned that smoking is dangerous from a prolonged fuck of hers whose ex-girlfriend had died. Coughed to death, sprayed red. See bloodspreads everywhere in the bedroom, even in each corner of the sheets. She textures the plot, by saying that she dreamed of this after-life ex-partner telling her that he had smothered her to death. “The images weren’t very clear, a woman whose hands are cut, just her coffin in twisted motions… It is the sex I enjoy the most that I do not write about!” She screams! It is offhand. Not insulting but begging of connections… She is a hothead, trained in caring about women, whether in platonic threads or in scissoring! She mistrusts diagnostics as pure scientific guesswork, only gets checked to get back to the equilibrium.

iii.

She loves her mother who is a healer & does not like men very much. She hates their minds. She needs to edit the parts she is aware she is fighting back. She hears from her daughter that she needs to put in at least 41 hours per week for her PhD. She empathises without fully understanding. Not to emulate the pellucid discussions in Dionne Brand’s Theory. Just Mother & Daughter in Unison. A catchy title in the Republic of South African literary landscape. Psychoanalytic reading nation in craggy porno-imaginative trends. Content vs Form is still the banal argument. Can we disintegrate the tongue from saliva? Her mother shares with her that her body is deteriorating. She feels pain every second, does not remember living pain-free or child-free. It’s the spine, heavy shoulders, weakening legs, decaying teeth, taxing positivity, dreams & premonitions, prophecies, guiding the herd: headaches; even her mother’s bum splits are painful. How she goes to sleep is from a rub. Her spiritual children taking turns to rub the stiff neck, shoulders, sides of her back, the back’s panty-line, the thigh-backs, the calves & the ankles & flats of her foot. “My mom’s a tired dog; they all take turns to smell her.” The scream is a sharp thrill from which she undoes herself.

vii.

Why is she caring about what feminists do? Righteous about it?

v.

She updates her mother that her study’s supervisors are two white women. The main supervisor is a young white woman. English. Pale faced, oddly sharp. Beautiful spirit. She relates to her delusion of loving women more than men. She can love black women. She possesses a special share of expressions not made public but in internal engagements – fear of white men’s judgement or approval? OR her boss’s, doubt, who knows! Authenticated secrecy, rightful. No lies, it is sometimes difficult to see & say these things within a single academic lens. Her co-supervisor is slightly older. Afrikaans. Short too, patient, very understanding in those glasses. At times not prepared to have a candid talk about heteromonogamy. That, if we were to think about the eroticisation of power, women in general become complicit. What then? Still a lovely woman. Not SCUM. She holds hands during the feedback sessions, matrons in prayer-like quality. She makes things up.

vi.

She stutters, finishes her thoughts always sounding like a half-informed moron. Where is the academic logorrhoea? She expects you would have come across the creative rigmarole to give her a chance. Not a moron…

but the devious literariness antics. She informs her mother she appreciates her study’s supervisors as an ardent student who can take feedback. Does not possess a fragile ego, unlike the straight men she asks why feminist straight women endure. She celebrates guidance, reading whatever she wanted. Her mother’s house is in the township, got broken into this past November. She & her siblings were very angry to learn a thief had stolen the mother’s gas stove, buckets, pots, kettle, iron, dishes, safety & even the tight incense, sage & some miscellanea she couldn’t grasped properly. The furry, husky voices of the siblings retaliating, in a séance uttering violence. On top of that, the kleptomaniac had also taken the kitchen’s key, locking mom in, confining her into hot air. This was a norm in Northern Pretoria: Soshanguve, Mabopane & surrounding areas (little boys = sudden oldster patriarchs): “lomfana wenze ikhaya lethu kampunzi edl’emini!” The siblings ALL lived faraway!

iv.

She discusses motherhood as not an impartial endeavour. She has read Veronique Tadjo’s short story The Betrayal to half agreement. Hers is an-in-depth way that doesn’t need anyone’s approval. Not sped fantasies. Men do not stop being patriarchs with the arrival of the pearl- like – alien-like skin. Grey, white dust tiniest body. Milk eyes, babe mouth, nose, tiny fingers, arbitrary way of being. She asserts. She knows. She wails. She disturbs. She doesn’t need to ruminate about children with men who are half-dead. They remain frenzied in the unsober, hegemonic & rightly investigated form anyway. For her, this is not like teaching literature, instinctual. Sometimes out of one’s control art must flee the boxes. Questions posed from either camp to come with various opportunities: this time she watches her supervisors both fight to get their point across. She respects, hears them. Whether it is documented or not, supervisors also have a point to prove to their students. She wants to tell them they must let go; this is her PhD after all.

Bafana & his delusions

She remembers that in his teenage years, the community learns that he had a hand. Growing into his 20s, he knew that he was not able to pay his debt in time. Bafana didn’t care much. His pleasures had to be free, without obligation. The tail had to be cut from its inception stages. He loved to take, breaking the systematic expectations was guilt-free. Trouble-free exercise activity for him. The ever-corrupted character & accountability not conceptualised at all. He expected to be taught what reconciliation looks like. He encompassed, possessed that deluded freedom of inflated male beat. Just a bad boy; man. Baphomet. He would have to have his balls burned first! His scrotum knowingly a smelly leather. This carried on for years, decades, centuries. Township King (in truth he is just a worm) who could make afraid & sagging boobs pointy once again & claim proud violator of natural things. He would tell everyone caring to listen that women throw their vaginas at him & revel in showing the marks from the slit’s patterns on his face, the sharpness. He believed their holes disintegrated & remade his face. Until he came to her house. Look, her mother & niece were asleep. Not suspecting of the upcoming uncomplicated plot discovered in hindsight. He scouted in the early hours. Didn’t crack a window, just strutted with proud malice. Building up his intensity before he budges in. Should take a pause, after interacting with him.

Bafana was a worm, maggot-like. He survived in the splurge, hosts’ vulnerabilities. Think of a virtual writer you write back to unknown by anybody else, who wanted to fuck other women whilst fucking his heteromonogamous white professor & calling it novelistic art. This professor, a plain white woman who is a foreigner to South African literature, although overzealous & often imposing her foreign reading habits of gorging the political porn to African literature’s texts. (Some of her stuff, you’d want to pour petrol & set on fire on the real, the poet once stated, jousted). The worm always hinted that he didn’t truly respect her. For she put too much effort to appear nonracist & feminist. Bafanais Bafana, does not wonder how you feel. Festooned a lot of their experiences, madnesses like love pending an ablaze expiry date, clothes & books & hard drive with unpublished works left behind. What white women do is not want to be hated only if under the breath. She messed up by accusing a lot of black women he liked & wanted to fuck as leg-spreading loose whores. Ah, typical to think that black women don’t deserve an elongated labium (when the worm didn’t have any fangs). She could make you think dull things about other women. She was on the helicopter mode, looking down (but) to a double sick & double vulnerable Ndi. Little she knew, he told everyone closer to him that it wasn’t going to be another Flora Veit-Wild’s hoard of Dambudzo Marechera’s range especially if we get to the posthumous mind & trove. Bafanais not oblivious it could have been another joke on the triumph of white writing constantly determining tastes. (Whoever you are, you should hate it with passion! You will not.) She would have to publicly miss him, make the fat chase. Lest we forget, the breaking point was when she (white woman) thought she could tell him (black man) what to write & not. This is literary gossip; there is no enjoyment in writing about men, Bafana.

Arranged, this is a passage about Bafana. Who had made a choice one time to break at the healer’s house. In the form presented, it is too barren to not be fathomed. The items he had stolen were confiscated back by the spiritual children who care deeply about their spiritual mother. One by one. As such, they also went to Bafana’s mother to request for her to buy the items they couldn’t confiscate back, probably sold to passersby who like backdoors. From thereon, Bafana’s mother didn’t show up at their every Saturday stokvel (there were many others, but this is the one his mother had decided to join which members met to combine monies every Saturday morning). 9am sharp. She began sending other members to present her contributions on her behalf. She didn’t want to deal with the healer anymore because she owed something because of her son. By any means, the healer got paid what’s due.

It was on everyone’s lips that Bafana’s feet had gotten swollen two months after. It went on at first as a rumour then took a sanctification of some sort. As we speak, Bafanawas buried last week Friday, her mother called to inform her of this. There was no bad taste in the mouth following Bafanaleading himself to his death, getting killed by the door he himself entered. At his funeral, people came to eat, drink & yap about. I wish this was figurative not literal. I wish I was touched & cared. Funny & sad & should be disregarded at the same time. Who is the clever boss? feminism is for everybody: passionate politics, bell hooks.

Bafana is many, exists & manifests in various forms. However, it is all under one ceiling for all his vices. Bafanais aware of what he is doing. That is why you should never listen to a man when he says men are different; not willing to address his patriarchy, wants to externalise than internalise, Bafanais aware of what he is doing. He sticks his penis on a goat’s behind, he peruse dead bodies, he thinks sexually of young girls in leggings, his hard on is unpredictable, rubs it with his both hands, loves that sensation. Do not think he wouldn’t do the worst. He can push for sex when he feels alone. His is the pervasive 30s narcissism, he won’t admit he is reproachable. He must lose & die first. Not stylish & polished. Bafana is a piece of shit.

sexual performance delusions

I do not know if I was any of the people delusionally in love, I go on for months without men & their energy & the swing between their legs, I crave for it, that innocent feeling, I can’t say & mean it, that I wouldn’t live without anyone, I am too selfish, love myself too much, I do not place my love onto somebody else to self-cessation, don’t know how to, I touch myself too often, I like a feminist text that pricks grandiose dark emotions, that’s what I read & feel alive to be more rebellious, I am held accountable, I could dote & extol men, but I do not, I find it problematic, as young-girl-energy, not SCUM-like, embarrassing ignorance that should be forsaken, Solanas, the radical figure persists in my life, reread countless times, I fantasise about SCUM-African, African-SCUM, Not Snail-Sense, Those conversations against men, I have even stopped measuring the alternating images of men’s penises, do not care if others are small or whatever size (feeling a man full inside of you is betraying the movement, not getting lost, is that kind of feminism I care to read), I am too aware at the encounter, I am not a woman who is watching things as they happen to her, I make my own theories, I turn the volume up & issue a fuck-you, I will tell you: go read Mcfadden, it is super feminist texts that have told me & taught me to think & speak of the cunt in its complex realms, not just a swinging dick, although I have put the tip of my tongue on his pee-hole & heard a scream, hasty laughter of pleasure, I am also trained in music, so I like to listen to something, creaks of the wooden floor, to the bones-breaking’s rhythm, I can explain to my daughter what an outro is, I have watched him sweep the floor whilst blasting the walls with heavy metal, THE BLACK DAHLIA MURDER, my ears are a versatile organ, an eclectic rubber, stretches to genre-bending expressions, men who can look into my eyes when I am on top of them, whispering clarity, kiss their eyes, remind them of how little they are under the sun, as a D student, I was close to him when I was in Johannesburg & he was in Gqeberha, I wasn’t close to him when he was in Johannesburg & I was in Gqeberha, I dumb myself down a lot, it happens, the English literature methods work with the creative writing, I look at a dick & turn the other way, seduction theory, not siphoned energy but draw a man in only to reject him profusely, ROSE says roses don’t suffice, this is the theoretical framework developed by mothers who understand the litigation abuse men will put a woman through, he will run to courts because he wants to expose the children to substance abuse, he is a sicko who knows the law is a phallic stature, claiming that he wants his children, when he doesn’t support nor muse on the important dates: when they lost their first tooth – beam at the R20 note superstition puppetry under their pillow, he knows the magistrate & advocate & social worker will give him the time of his day, the children are a token to show his virtues to his friends & family & a tool to demonstrate his delusional “might” to me Sis Aya said disgusted but comforting me, after all, he does not know the weight of my son on the back, he does not know what it feels like to arrange play dates with other moms you have nothing in common with excerpt for the pleasant, present & naïve love between our baby children, I see the gimmicks, peel the eyes, the poet told me he stayed away from his son for three years healing his then sad heart, I hurt from a mother who treats my daughter as an easy replacement, I reserve myself from mothers who couldn’t think consciously of parenting, of writers who believe sex couldn’t be written about, I cried when my daughter was handed to my arms for the first time (I wasn’t wounded), I didn’t know what was going on, with my son I was too anxious, I give birth, do not manipulate anyone, not even the guy I am fucking right now, fond emotions, I visualise his penis too much as a distant memory, it has the capacity, I do not need to engage every day, it doesn’t need to be a proof of my womanhood, it is nice enough to be set free as Coyote Dick, I watch porn outside of it, not to worship but out of curiosity, the searches are disparate, depending on the dissipating mood, current history reveals “men moaning”, Ricky Johnson, I get a call from a doc who blatantly asks me what my aversion to patriarchy is, he proceeds to say he is very smart, not surprised by this he just graduated for his D, he feels big he doesn’t even realise he’s asking me nonsense, I laugh because I have not watched the Porn Awards as yet, the one girl who introduced me to them was from Sosha, ko di BB, she could fake kisses in front of the camera, Business Student at Tuks, had attempted numerous small businesses, around this time including a second hand textbooks business, her name: Mpho, had had an ugly fallout with her female business partner that everyone knew about, had acne-like sores spread on her black forehead, glossy thick brown lips, she is now on OnlyFans packaging videos, selling sex, as a student at uni she had had a list of which Porn Stars must be given what Nobel number, she takes amateur videos of herself in different outfits, tantalises, her lace in tatters, does fervid moves, dances roughly, ignores comments, just a feminist & her sex toys, frequent & rapid hair change is what I see on this still image, I am not trying to hypnotise you, I work with perfect strangers, female bugs, male bugs, I do not shy from that, I have heard a man say “I do not like what I do not write”, as if that should be my problem, his ineffectual state has got nothing to do with me, cuddles, another job of heteromonogamy, future-faking, Janey, (my father killed his cigarette against my arm’s skin when I was twenty months old) Black, Tarantula (I issue the ineluctable fuck you, leave town, I escape Bafana) I ride, I do not harbour hate, I escape the violence in my head, writhing & handcuffed, floodgates open by clitoromegaly sensitivity, smooth, daring, I do not connect very well with women who respect men, Daddy, I bite my nails, I can cook, I do not take beer, I back away from feminists who suddenly do not find men dumbs & dumps & losers anymore once they marry them, I anchor myself in the research tenets at an experiential level, I simply do not care about men, I love my children, I am aware of the lizard in the corner of the wall, I scatter salt all over, I do voice exercises, I have a tenacious itching right hand, I can explain the ways to go about creative writing in a workshop, without a spectacle, eager students, think about how to get them to read & write regularly, live, not tell them a machine could do it for them, ethically, knee-booted I could not believe in that, I call out, we won’t speculate anymore but time things, I issue a warning I will not entertain you anymore if you drown in him, I can starve him my attention, I end things in abrupt fadeouts, give me what you are in the moment, I could go on, I love my mother.

1. SINCE EVERYONE IS TALKING ABOUT GASLIGHTING

2. THIS IS NOT A NOVEL

3. WE ARE STILL EXPERIMENTING WITH FORM.