Our house in some strange way had made us popular among the wrong crowd, and without any effort we had acquired some rather unsavoury friends of our own. I was easily influenced by those whom I thought had what it took to make it in life. I had met one such character, who became my own personal devil on the beach, I will call him Jack. He was a well-spoken, well-groomed guy whom everyone knew and looked up to. He took a liking to me and took me under his wing. He was part of a music band, which had won best up-and-coming band. He also was part of a crew of surfers that frequented the wedge reef. I was the last local to join that crew. Jack never drank alcohol or smoked, and he had a flat on the beachfront with his girlfriend. He spent his days composing music and surfing. I was impressed with his talents and discipline, considering that he, too, was an illegitimate child from a mother who was was so similar to my own.
Soon I was spending a lot of time at his house and surfing with him and the guys. The other guys always smoked cannabis before surfing. I used to pack my surf gear in my school bag, and instead of hopping onto a bus, would head straight to his place, get changed and hit the surf. I wanted to be just like these guys who were legends in my eyes, free and living life on their own terms.
After I got thrown out of my moms apartment for leaving school without her permission, I stayed at Jacks’s place for a few days. My brother told me that the welfare was looking for me and that I better return home, or I would be placed in correctional facility for troubled youths called, “Boys Town”. This was a correctional type facility for troubled youths.
My brother and I had grown closer and closer as we got older, the bond between us was always strong, so I knew what he was saying was true. I set up a meeting with them and agreed to return to school, but learned from then that I had been expelled from Brettonwood and would have to join George Campbell High. The reason I got expelled was for writing a fake letter from my mom stating we were moving to a new city and asked that the headmaster should release me to move to enrol in a new school in the area that we were moving to. I gladly went from class to class saying goodbye to each teacher. It was one of the happiest days of my school life. I was 15 and had become quite skilled with the silver tongue, lying and manipulating as I went along, determined to succeed in my plans.
I sat chatting away to the principal, answering odd questions, like, “What school have you chosen?” I simply replied that my mom was taking care of it. They let me go, no real loss to them, since I had made a habit of being absent a lot. He sent me packing with my school bags, and I was delighted.
Later that day the principal decided to recommend a school to my mom, so he rang her up, only to find my story was false. I strolled home feeling grand about life and daydreaming about how much surfing I could get in each day now that the boring business of school was out of the way. My mother was furious, but I battled to understand this, as she had told me a day or two earlier that she wanted to pull me out of school anyway. This was because they had complained about her taking us out of school for 12 days for her brother-in-law’s funeral in Cape Town. In my opinion, I was simply helping her by doing the paperwork. Well, I got the usual, a few punches, had my clothes thrown at me, and was told to get out.
So, at just 15 years old, I headed over to Jacks’s place and spent a night or two there and then stayed at another friend’s place for a while. But the welfare arranged for me to join to a new school called George Campbell High. I enrolled to much of the other scholars distaste, as it was Brettonwood's rival school. It didn’t bother me much since I never had any intention of fitting into school and was already looking at exit strategies. All I remember was that the year I joined the school had gone from being an boy’s only school, to a co-educational one, which meant one thing…….girls. I remember going out with the one and only girl in the school (worth dating, in my eyes) which made my name unpopular to the seniors who had already spotted her potential. No worries, I was good at dodging trouble by this time and flying under the radar had become my sport of choice.
I only stayed in school long enough to turn 16, then I got a letter from a local business saying they had work for me and convinced my mom to officially pull me out of school. And so, began my real infatuation and exploration of the night.
One night, as I returned home to our flat, I was greeted by the security guard who manned the gate at the entrance to our block of flats. No one could get in from 6 at night to 6 in the morning without the guard opening the gate, since he held the only key. He knew everyone who lived there, and whether they were in or out. He became my friend and would often give me the heads up if my mom had gone stumbling out or come stumbling in. On this evening he let me know she was battling to walk straight, which was his way of letting us know the wheels had fallen off the bus.
As I approached the door and heard her loud voice I braced myself for another night of terror. Only this time the front door was double locked from the inside. I knocked on the door for her to open. But I got sworn at and told to leave, I felt so angry. My mom’s current boyfriend, Dirk, was inside with her. He was one of the better ones in my eyes because he was quite a peaceful man who never said much and loved fishing. He worked on the tug boats in the harbor.
But tonight, he had to side with her, and told me to go sleep somewhere else. I told him I had no fight with him and asked him to stay out of it. Filled with anger and the frustration of not being able to get into my own house to sleep, I put my fist through the front door window. The security guard arrived at our flat, but I said not to worry I was leaving. The next day I arrived there to find all my clothes in plastic bags in the passage. Same story, different day.
But what I couldn’t handle was the fact that my mom was showing everyone bruises the next day, saying that I had beaten and kicked her. I was shocked! I had never even got into the flat!
I couldn’t care less what a bunch of addicts and strangers thought of me, but when I saw my brother’s face, I was broken. He thought it was true. I hadn’t even entered the flat that night or even come close to her and yet she had made up these stories to cover up the true story behind the bruises, which could have been anything.
The fact that my own mother could tear me down like that was unspeakable. I was later to see how many lies she had been feeding people about me. She had it in for me for some reason. Years later I found a letter from her to one of her friends defaming me. This was very hard for me after the years I had supported her in every way, both financially and taking care of her needs. I confronted her, and her response was, “Hey, I didn’t mail it, I was just feeling down.” You can only imagine what kind of an effect this may have on a person, especially when it’s coming from your own mother and all you have done is brought money into the home and provided financially for her, something I had done since leaving school.