This Changed my Life - My Jerry Springer Moment

 

It was back in my Fag Hag days.  Yes, I was one of those women.  The phase lasted about two years.

I had a Fag Husband (is that what they are called?) and we were a couple in every way, other than sex. 

Of course, I did try to get physical with him.  Of course, I failed. 

I was completely unprepared for my Jerry Springer moment.  I had a cosseted suburban childhood.  My mother dressed her age, my father worked hard and was strict.  We went to church.  We had a nice house.  I went to the local schools - junior, senior and high school.  

I even told my mother, in one of those petty teenage rebellion moments, that we were boring.

"One day, my child," she replied, "you'll be grateful we were boring."

Annoyingly, as with other pontifications she made, she was absolutely right.

So there I am, young and relatively innocent, living with my Fag husband in a city far from home, working some piss-ant, dead-end job, experimenting with the most inane drugs you could dare to try, smoking cigarettes and deep into the Techno scene.  Yes, I was one of those people who went to a Rave with a baby bottle around my neck, filling it only with water, because a little tab of Acid had me on a psychadelic high that no alcohol could match.

And then my Fag Husband introduces me to his childhood friend.  This man-boy was not White, he was rich and he was well educated.  So you see the irony, he had left his culture of birth behind, been assimilated into White South African society through a private school education and parents rich as Croesus, but I saw him as so very, very exotic.  In fact, in the days of Apartheid, I thought, in my naeive way, that being attracted to him was a borderline act of political resistance.

And so I fell for him, even though he had a girlfriend, who was included in our social outings.  I found her intimidating, because I'd grown up strictly middle class and like my Fag Husband and his friend, she was private school educated and came from money.  I never felt, back then, that I fitted in with those Country Club-type people.

Mr Exotic was as interested in me as I was in him and, long story short, we ended up doing the Horizontal Mambo more than once behind his girlfriend's back.  I'm a firm believer, just by the way, that blaming "The Other Woman" is a crock of shit.  No-one kidnaps and forces your partner to flirt with them, fall for them and fuck them.  The third person in the triangle - male or female - has made no commitment to you.  Just as getting rid of prostitutes won't get rid of prostitution, blathering on that people should respect other people's commitments and "not give in to tempting the person in a relationship," is utterly unrealistic.

Anyway, one night, Little Miss Country Club came to pick up Mr Exotic at our house.  She went into my room and found a used condom.  Now there's a life lesson right there.  If you choose infidelity, at least cover your tracks.

Seeing as the only other person there at the time was my Fag Husband, it didn't take a genius to figure out who I'd be schtuping.

She went completely ape shit.

Now let's think for a moment about the term "ape shit."  It indicates a regression to a primal state and refers to the ape defense mechanism where they do, in fact, throw their feces.  

When two male apes are squaring up for a fight, they will posture, trying to establish, before physical contact, who is more dominant.  This posturing involves baring teeth, beating the ground and throwing things.  Any things.  Food, stones, sticks, and poop.  If one shows himself to be more dominant than the other, this enables the weaker ape to back down and avoid a fight which could injure them both.  It's the ape equivalent of the "naval exercises" that a government will coincidentally conduct off the shores of a country that's starting to piss them off.

So.  Back to the Ape Shit.  She's crying, she's screaming, she's calling me all sorts of names.  She slaps me across the face before Mr Exotic steps in to hold her back.  She lurches forward and tries to kick me in the head.  I can still see, after almost 20 years, her black boot and how high the heel was.  (Hmmmm.  I wonder if it was designer...)

Now here's the part that would not make for a good Jerry Springer episode:  I didn't respond at all.

I was in complete shock.  Not only had I never faced this kind of ridiculous display before but, back then, I really believed that rich, private school, Country Club types were upper class, like the Queen of England was upper class, and that they always behaved with strict decorum.

I remember I was somewhat removed, in my head, from the whole situation, looking at it from a distance thinking:   "I can't believe she's actually doing this.  Has she gone a bit mad?***"

Mr Exotic, rather muscly and at least one and a half times his girlfriend's weight, was struggling to hold her back.

My Fag Husband, being true to the cliche that gay boys only fight with witty barbs, was nowhere to be seen.

At that moment, our housemate came home.  His finance, sussing the situation immediately, gave me half a pill of some kind of anti-anxiety meds she was on, and I was soon sitting in my bedroom, completely zoned out, hearing the screeching recriminations from behind my locked door.

And I'm still thinking: Why is she doing this?

She should be breaking up with him, kicking him in the head or, even better, the balls.  She should be getting back in her car and tearing off into the night, stranding him here.  She was pretty, she was rich and I figured she could get anyone she wanted.  It wasn't like this was her future husband, for Christ's sake.  We were all in our early twenties!   

I realize now I was in some strange kind of Spock mode.

The only thing I could focus on was how illogical her behavior was.

It was probably the most surreal experience I have ever had in my life.

But I guess we all have our dramas to face.   

I have friends who grew up in families where their parents had fights like this on a regular basis.  I have a close friend whose husband hit her.  I even had a friend who used to create drama in her life with her boyfriend because, I realized years afterwards, that was the only mode of behavior she knew when it came to relationships.

So I guess I got lucky.  I've only had one of these Jerry Springer moments in my life.

But it taught me so, so many things:

• Rich people are as fucked up and badly behaved as the rest of us
• The victims of a partner's infidelity would rather blame the third party than entertain the thought that their love would choose someone over them
• Anti-anxiety meds are a blessing from our Lord God himself in high stress situations
• Never get too close to the boots of a woman who wants to kick your head in

And another thing.

I'd be an utterly terrible Jerry Springer guest.  Unless I take up Kick Boxing.

* Mad = Crazy, not angry in the English sense

To read more in the This Changed My Life series, click the Tag below or the Category link on the left.

You might like: This Changed my Life - Sex and the City 

This changed my life - Madonna

 

Madonna changed my life.

The first time I saw the Like a Virgin video, I was shocked by two things. 

First, that she was wearing the stuff she was wearing and singing the lines she was singing and, second, that the video has passed the censors in the first place.

OK, I guess it's time to come clean.  I didn't grow up in England.  I lived there for many, many years, but I was born and raised in South Africa during the Apartheid years. 

Propaganda and censorship was the order of the day.

I remember watching Pop Shop - our weekly music programme on state-run television - and wondering why bands clearly spent so much money on music video production, only to not film enough to cover the three and a half minute song.  Why else would they lamely repeat portions of the video at certain points?

What I didn't know, of course, was that this was the censorship compromise.  Splice in inane bits of footage - sans boobies, sexual simulation, etc. - and so be able to actually show the video on our TV station.

When I first saw the full version of Duran Duran's Girls on Film video years later in England, I nearly fell off the sofa.

So you see how amazed I was that Madonna had squeezed through the puritanical hypocrisy of the Gereformeerde Kerk - back then South Africa's self-appointed moral compass.

But, boy, I was glad she had.

Madonna showed me what I wanted to be, what I could be, what I could dare to be.

I was never one of those girls who dressed up in big crosses, cut off gloves and fishnets like she did (I once saw a girl at a school disco dressed like her and berated myself for not coming up with the same idea).  No.  My bravery was restricted to my dreams and imagination.

But bravery it was.  New courage.  New hope. 

Hope of freedom from suburbia, from the grip of parental control, from the pressure to be an A student.  Hope of a life in a city with clubs and smoking and alcohol and fashion and sex and glamorous rebellion.

Imagine a good Catholic girl in an Apartheid regime seeing Madonna save a black Jesus in Like a Prayer?

Imagine a young suburban girl discovering her sexual urges hearing, in Papa Don't Preach, that not only does "the worst" happen but, when it does, you can rebel and say "I'm keeping my baby!"

Imagine a young woman, trying to find out if she can be pretty, seeing a previously grungy Madonna metamorphose into Marilyn Monroe in Material Girl?

For, you see, if she could do it, I could.

As Madonna evolved and transformed over the first 20 years, her fundamental iconic status for me remained untouched.

She was a strong woman, making it on her own. She was unashamedly sexually active, and sexually adventurous. She was creative, artistic, yet making money in that world. She questioned everything, thereby allowing me to do the same.

I once paid $350 a ticket to see her in Oakland.  We got lost among houses with burglar guards and next to what were clearly black windowed drug dealer cars and we were petrified.  But it was worth it.

I once flew to Paris to see her, with my BFF.  I was in a seat so far back she was just a little blot of shiny movement.  But it was worth it.

I went to see the Truth or Dare movie 7 times, each time noticing some new tiny detail I had missed before.  I had no money back then and it was luxury for me to go to the cinema.  But it was worth it.

As the years have passed, I have mostly stood by Madonna.

She still makes good music, even if it's very different to what she did back then.

But do I love her as much as I used to?

I'm not sure.

It's not about the religion, the adoptions or the divorce (I always thought Guy Ritchie was an asswipe). 

It's because she has failed me on the ultimate, the final, rebellion.

Madonna has refused to flip the bird at modern convention.

With the plastic surgery, she is telling all of us that it's not OK to grow old.  I don't want her to stop singing, or dancing, or horse-riding, or adopting.  

I just want her to have crows feet around her eyes and go on Oprah and say it's OK to not only be 50, but look it.

She is not growing old gracefully.

And for that, I find it hard to forgive her.

To read a wonderful take on Madonna and what she's meant to women over the years, see Emily Nussbaum's Justify My Love article from New York Magazine.

This changed my life - Sex and the City

Sex and the City changed my life.

First, being someone living in a foreign city far away from home, Sex and the City showed me that your friends can be your family.

Second, it showed us that, as women, we were allowed to be out there having cocktails, fun and sex and be choosy about men. We didn't have to be like our mothers, and "settle".

Third, it showed us that the didn't have to have everything figured out. This is best summed up by Melissa Grego, from Television Week, being interviewed on "The 100 Greatest TV Characters."

The thing about Carrie Bradshaw is that she is a cultural game changer. At her age, most people have their life figured out. They're a wife, mother, maybe a working mother or they've decided to be single. She's sorta still figuring out who she is and what she wants. Is she defined by her work? Is she defined by a man? Is she defined by her friends? Is she defined by where she lives or what she wears?

And finally, a quote which shows how this amazingly written, acted and produced show could shake up a young woman of my generation, and make her question everything she'd been taught growing up...

Carrie: "Did you ever think that maybe we're the White Knights? And we're the ones that have to save ourselves?"

Charlotte: "That is so depressing."

Carrie: "Is it?"