In Search of Sex and Languages in South Africa

Durban, South Africa, July 2006

One of my passions is meeting -- and preferably hooking up with -- men who speak unusual languages (unusual in the United States; they may have millions of speakers).  When I visited South Africa in 2000, I met speakers of Zulu and Khoisan.  In 2006, my friend Doc and I returned for a conference, eager for more sex and languages.  The conference lasted for three days, but we decided to stay for eight, to give us a chance to look for speakers of:  Zulu, Xhosa, Afrikaans, Tswana, and Sotho.

Tuesday: Jet-lagged.

Wednesday: Zulu

Spoken by 1.1 million people near Durban.

Your baseball bat is big: bat yakho baseball kuyinto enkulu

Ok, I've been with a Zulu guy before, but Doc hadn't.  A night at the Lounge, Durban's biggest gay bar, yielded a meeting with Zulu-speaker Joseph, a biology teacher in his twenties. 

Thursday: Xhosa, a "click" language spoken by 8.2 million people in the Eastern Cape province.

I want to go home with you: ndifuna ukuya ekhaya kunye nawe

There are a lot of Xhosa speakers in Durban.  After we told Joseph about our quest, he introduced us to an ex-boyfriend, Wushi, a Xhosa speaker worked in a garage:  a gym rat in his 30s, rather hefty, with a little belly.









Friday: Afrikaans


Spoken by 7.1 million people, mostly descendants of Dutch Boer settlers.  Unfortunately, they are mostly on the west side of the country, a day's drive from Durban.

I like to eat sausages: Ek hou daarvan om wors te eet

We rented a car and drove to Johannesburg, six hours north of Durban, to the Rand Afrikaans University in Johannesburg, that offers courses in both Afrikaans and English.

We walked on the campus.  Nothing.

We went to the Department of Afrikaans and talked to the only professor who was there during the winter break.  He was, surprisingly, black, or what they call "Colored" in South Africa.

He told us that Afrikaans was very much a "mother tongue," spoken at home but not on the streets.

In the evening, we went to the Melville, Johannesburg's gay neighborhood, hoping to meet an Afrikaans speaker in the Factory or the REC Room.

At the REC Room, I picked out a likely looking candidate: white, shorter than me, solidly built, a little chunky.  Light brown hair, round face, nice smile.

"Ik heet Boomer," I said in what I thought was Afrikaans.  "Ik kom uit..."

"Are you from Amsterdam?"  he exclaimed.  "I would love to go there!  Is it as hot as they say?"

We didn't meet anyone who spoke Afrikaans

Saturday: Tswana

We visited Constitution Hill and the Lion Park before driving about an hour north to Pretoria in search of Tswana, spoken by 4.4 million people in Botswana and nearby.

What is your name? Leina le gago ke mang?

This time we were smart.  We logged onto a chatroom in advance and arranged a meeting with  Tswana-spaker Thabo, who worked in information technology.  He took us to dinner at an Indian restaurant.

Sunday: Break

We visited the Vortrekker Monument, Church Square, and the Transvaal Museum, then had Chinese food and stayed in our hotel room for the night, watching Malcolm in the Middle, The Simpsons, and Family Guy.

"We're doing something wrong," Doc said.  "We're meeting lots of completely Western guys, the same that you would meet in Vienna or Amsterdam.  I want to meet tribal Africans."

"What do you mean?"  I asked.  "Grass huts and talking drums went out in the 1930s."

"Not that, but some of the old culture.  Same-sex relations that were age and gender-stratified, before the Western gay culture took over."

"So...street cruising?"



Monday: Sotho.

Spoken by 5.6 million people.

Which way is the toilet? Batekamore e kae?

We selected a likely village, Zwelisha, in the heart of the Drakenburg Mountains near the border of Lesotho.  Not much there but tin-roofed houses, a clinic, and a high school, a low yellow building.

Even though it was a cool winter day, we ran across a group of high school boys walking along the side of the road, naked except for loincloths, their bodies covered with white clay.  They made flexing body-building gestures to us.

We stopped in at the clinic to ask what was going on.




The young doctor on call -- actually a medical student from Johannesburg -- told us that it was a manhood ritual.  "They spend a week in a lodge, bragging and bonding.  They used to fight with spears, but now it's usually wrestling.  Same thing. Hoe meer dinge verander, hoe meer het hulle dieselfde, we say."

Wait -- was this guy Afrikaans?

He was.

Tuesday: Back to Durban

Four out of five languages isn't bad.

My Cousin Phil's Boyfriend

Rome City, Indiana, Thanksgiving 1971

A week after my 11th birthday, we are back in Indiana for Thanksgiving.

Grandma Davis, Aunt Nora, and Dad got up at dawn to fuss about in the kitchen, stuffing the turkey, making a scalloped corn casserole, putting little fork prints into pie crusts.  The rest of us watch tv or wander around outside with the dogs, as the house gradually fills up with aunts and uncles, great-aunts and uncles, cousins and second cousins, their boyfriends and girlfriends, miscellaneous friends invited at random.

I have door-answering duty when my Aunt Edna and Uncle John arrive with their grown-up son Phil.

Dad doesn't get along with his older sister, so we don't see them very often, even though they live only an hour's drive from Rome City.   I haven't seen Cousin Phil since I was a little kid.  Now he's grown up, in college: medium height, clean-shaven, light brown hair cut short, kind of cute but not "dreamy."

But waiting at the front door next to him is the most beautiful man I have ever seen!

Afro-American, and not just brown-skinned, but actually black., very, very dark, flawless.  A head taller than Cousin Phil, with a round smiling face and a huge v-shaped torso that pushes out his blue business suit and white overcoat. Huge hands.

As Aunt Edna and Uncle John head toward the kitchen, I stare, thunderstruck.  Cousin Phil looks nervous.

"Um...Boomer, this is my friend Malcolm from school."

"Hi, Boomer," Malcolm says in a beautifully accented English. "What subject do you study in college?"

"What...no, I'm not in college, I'm in sixth grade!"

He laughs.  "My mistake -- you seem so mature."  We shake hands.  My small hand is engulfed in his.

"Are you from Chicago Heights?"  I ask.  It' a stupid question, but I've never met anyone Afro-American before, and I remember seeing a lot of Afro-Americans on the street there.

"No, Little Man.  I am from Ethiopia, a country in Africa."

Africa!  I want to ask him about the languages and cultures and lost civilizations, like the ruins of Great Zimbabwe.  But, trying to be polite, I ask only "What's your favorite thing about America?"

"Hamburgers and french fries, of course.  Very good.  And the people -- very friendly."  He nudges Cousin Phil, who smiles.

Wait -- could Cousin Phil and Malcolm be best men?  Everyone is always telling me that I will someday "discover girls," and start dating girls, and eventually marry a woman -- it's inevitable, it happens to everybody.

But Cousin Phil and Malcolm are both in their 20s, with no wives.  Maybe they have each other!  Maybe they have found a way to reject their future of wives and kids, found a way to live with each other!

I'm anxious to interrogate them, to find out how they did it.  Unfortunately, I have to sit at the Kids' Table during dinner, but afterwards, when the men are watching some sports game and the women are washing the dishes, I tag along when Cousin Phil takes Malcolm out to see Sylvan Lake, a few blocks from Aunt Nora's house.

"How did you meet Cousin Phil?" I asked, hoping to hear about a meet-cute, an instant attraction, an invitation to dinner, a sleepover.

"We are taking physics together."

"A lot of late-night study sessions," Cousin Phil adds, nudging Malcolm.  They both laugh.

"My friend Bill and I are moving to Ethiopia when we grow up," I hint.  "We're going to live together and study lost civilizations.  And we're going to speak Swahili."

Malcolm pats me on the shoulder.  I notice that he and Cousin Phil aren't holding hands, but maybe they're just shy.  "Swahili is an important language in East Africa, Little Man, but in Ethiopia most people speak Amharic.  There are other languages as well.  In the north they speak Tigrinya."

"Tigrinya," I repeat.  "It sounds like Tiger."

He laughs.  "There are no tigers in Africa, but the Amharic word for lion is anibesi."

When it's time to say goodbye, I give Malcolm my address and ask him to send me something written in Amharic.  And he does!  About a week later, I get a letter postmarked Tiffin, Ohio, with a gospel tract in Amharic enclosed.

I write back, and through the winter and spring of sixth grade, Malcolm writes to me every couple of weeks.  Short letters, just a few sentences, but still -- letters!

Strangely, he doesn't say anything about Cousin Phil, but I guess he's just shy.

"Tell me when you come to visit your Aunt and Uncle," he writes.  "Then you will visit me, too.  We will go out for hamburgers."

A date with Malcolm and his Best Man!  Maybe we'll hug.  Maybe we'll have a sleepover!  

I imagine lying in bed between Malcolm and Cousin Phil, both of us in our underwear, their arms wrapped around me, our legs intertwined.   

The only problem is: Dad doesn't get along with my Aunt Edna and Uncle John.  He'll never agree to drive out to visit them.

Montpellier, Ohio, June 1972

I luck out: this year our camping trip is in Canada, and we're taking Grandma Davis with us.  Since we're driving right past Montpelier, it would be impolite to not stop and visit.

We sit on the porch of their big white house on Main Street, talking and drinking lemonade.  Suddenly Malcolm drives up -- by himself!

"Little Man, how are you?" he asks, holding out his hand.  I push him into a hug instead.

"Where's Cousin Phil?"

"He is busy at his job, but I took off.  I won't let my friend come to Ohio without saying hello."  He stops to shake hands with the adults, and answers polite questions about his classes and his job.  Then he turns to me.  "What do you want to do today, Mr. Boomer?  Get a hamburger?  Go swimming?"

"That's a good idea," Mom says.  "Why don't you take Ken with you, too?"

Great -- my baby brother tagging along on my date!

No sausage sighting -- we change at the house -- but at least I get to see Malcolm's strikingly hard-muscled body in a swimsuit, sit pressed next to him in the car on the way to the pool -- and, when we slide down the waterslide together, I lean back against Malcolm and feel his enormous package against my butt.


In the late afternoon we towel off and return to the house to change clothes, and Malcolm says goodbye.  I wrap him into another hug.

We continue to write, but the letters become more and more infrequent, and finally stop altogether.

Rome City, Indiana, Thanksgiving 1974

A week after my fourteenth birthday, we are back in Indiana for Thanksgiving at Aunt Nora's house, and Cousin Phil is there.  With his girlfriend!

I shake hands with her politely, but when I manage to get Cousin Phil by himself, I ask "Where's Malcolm?"

He stares, confused.  "Who?  Oh, Malcolm, from a few years ago.  I don't know.  We aren't really in touch."

"But I thought you were..."

He shrugs.  "We were in the same physics class, and when he didn't have a place to go for Thanksgiving, I invited him here.  Just to be nice.  We weren't really friends."

Or best men, I conclude, my eyes filling with tears.

I Meet the Hottest Guy in the World

Durban, South Africa, July 2000

I am attracted to the following traits:

1. Clergy.  Preachers, priests, monks, rabbis, imams, seminary students, Mormon missionaries.

2. Dark skinned.  Black, Middle Eastern, South Asian, Hispanic.  Among Europeans, Spanish, Italian, Greek. 

3. Short, small, compact.  Under 5'8" is good, under 5'" better.  

4. Muscular, the bigger and harder the better, or else husky, chubby, fat. As long as there's some mass.   

5. Baseball bat.

There are exceptions --my Celebrity Boyfriend had none of the above.  But the guys I date generally have two, usually three::

Fred the Ministerial Student: 1, 4, 5

The Greek Orthodox Priest with the Pushy Mom: 1, 4, 5

Jimmy, the Bodybuilder on Crutches: 3, 4, 5

Alan, the Ex-Porn Star: 1, 4, 5

Raul in West Hollywood: 2, 3
Blake in Manhattan: 2, 4, 5
Joe, my Boyfriend's Roommate: 2, 3, 4, 5

There aren't many guys around with four of the traits, and only once in my life have I met someone with all five.

In the summer of 2000, I wrote a paper on the evangelical Christian response to to gay men with AIDS, and presented it at the 13th International AIDS Conference, held in Durban, South Africa.

There were 12,000 people attending and 5,000 presentations, including an endless number on religious responses to gay men with AIDS.

One of the presenters in my session was Sibusiso, or Sibu for short, a student at the Lutheran seminary in Pretoria.

He was short, very dark, handsome, and a member of the clergy!  I don't remember what his presentation was about, but he mentioned being gay.

After the session I approached him, suggested we collaborate on a paper about gay Christian men with AIDS, and invited him for coffee.

He accepted.

Conference Center, Durban

He was 24 years old, Zulu, raised in an African Pentecostal Church, but converted to the Lutheran Church at age 15.  He came out at age 18, while studying Biblical Languages at the University of Pretoria.

We had such similar backgrounds!  We must be destined to be soul mates!

I reached over and casually touched his arm, and met hard muscle.  Four out of five traits!  Incredible!

That night Sibu and two of his friends went dancing at the Lounge, one of Durham's gay clubs.  I was 39, too old for dance clubs, but I invited myself along anyway.

When he headed for the dark room, I followed. 

Baseball bat.

All five of the traits!

 It was settled: Sibu was, by definition, the Hottest Guy in the World.

The Lounge, Durban

The Lounge was dirty, dank, packed, and too noisy to talk.  And everyone else was under 30, making me feel decidedly out of place.  

And Sibu and his friends kept dancing.  My shirt was soaked with sweat; my hair reeked of cigarette smoke; I was exhausted. I wanted to go home to bed.

But I also wanted to spend the night with the Hottest Guy in the World.

It was 3:00 am when we finally headed back to his hotel.  I tried to put my arm around him in the back seat of the taxi, but he brushed me away.  Closeted, I figured.

He said goodbye to his friends, and we got in the elevator.  "What floor are you?" he asked.

What did he mean by that?  "The same floor as you."

We walked down the hall to his room.  He opened the door.  "Well, goodnight."
 

 "Aren't you going to invite me in?"  I asked in desperation.

"It's late..."

"Well...can I see you for breakfast tomorrow?"

He frowned.  "Look...I like you, you're a nice guy and all that, but you're not my type."

"Not your type?  But...I starred in a porn film...."

"I like guys my own age.  Sorry."  The door slammed in my face.

Just my luck.  I meet the Hottest Guy in the World, and it's ten years too late.

See also: The Quest for the Bushman Penis.; In Search of Sex and Languages in South Africa

The Quest for the Bushman Penis

Durban, South Africa, July 2000

When I was in junior high in the 1970s, I read Lost World of the Kalahari, by Laurent Van Der Post, about the Bushmen or San.  Today it seems rather simplistic and colonialist, full of "noble savage" myths, but to a 15-year old in the Midwest, it was fascinating:

1. The Bushmen lived in the arid Kalahari desert, the most inhospitable place on Earth
2. Their culture hadn't changed in 40,000 years
3. They drew rock paintings similar to those of our cave man ancestors.
4. Their language used a distinctive pattern of clicks.
5. They were a distinctive race, yellow-skinned, wrinkled, with steatopygia (I had to look it up: large buttocks).

6. And, most intriguingly, the men "were born, lived, and died" in a semi-aroused state.   They were proud of their difference from other men, and called themselves Qhwai-xkhwe ("always standing") to openly proclaim it.

I had to see that!

The book had no illustrations, so one day I went to the Rock Island Public Library and checked out The Harmless People and Hunters of the Desert Land.  Nothing.

I didn't think about it again until college, where our library offered an Interlibrary Loan service.  So I requested The Khoisan Peoples of South Africa, Pygmies and Bushmen of the Kalahari, The Bushmen, and Namibia Old and New.  Nothing, although Bushmen rock art regularly depicts men in a state of arousal.

In college I saw The Gods Must Be Crazy (1980), about a Bushman who finds a discarded Coke bottle, the only relic of Western civilization he's ever seen, and tries to return it "to the gods."  He concludes that the "gods" are crazy.  Some nice physiques, but even if you look carefully, you can't see anything.

In West Hollywood, I saw A Far Off Place (1993), about two Western kids forced to flee across the Kalahari with the assistance of a helpful Bushman boy.  Nothing.

I didn't think about it again until I visited Durban, South Africa  in 2000.  There weren't any Khoisan or San speakers at the conference, that I know of.  There was a tourist attraction called the Bushman Caves, in the Drakensburg Mountains on the border with Lesotho, but no "real" Bushmen.

Then, the night after my regrettable experience with the Hottest Man in the World, I went back to the Lounge (it was the only gay bar in town).  This time there was a more working-class crowd.  And I saw a Bushman -- proper term, "San" or "Khoisan."  At least I think he was -- short, yellow-skinned, kind of wrinkled and wizened-looking.

Should I go up, introduce myself, and grab?  Follow him into the bathroom?  Hope that he went to the dark room?

I decided to introduce myself.

"Hi, my name is Boomer," I said.  "I'm from Montreal.  I used to work in porn films."

"Jerry." (Probably not his real name.)  He reached out to shake my hand, and kept on holding it.

He didn't speak English very well, but I got that he was Khoisan, he lived in Port Elizabeth, about 10 hours away by bus, and he was here for the conference.  AIDS was increasing rapidly among his people, due to a lack of awareness about safe-sex practices, and a refusal to believe that same-sex behavior existed.

Of course, it did.  It was everywhere.

He hadn't stopped holding my hand!  And now he was running his other hand against my thigh. 

Time to check.   On the small side, at least by African standards, but definitely aroused.

And it stayed that way for the whole night.

Se also: The Hottest Guy in the World.; In Search of Sex and Languages in South Africa

A Hookup with the Nigerian with the Tattooed Penis

Bloomington, May 1983

When Viju started taking me to the bars, when we were in grad school in Bloomington in 1983, AIDS was practically unknown, there was little fear of being robbed or murdered, and the West Hollywood rule against casual sexual encounters did not exist.

We had casual sex.  Quick, practically anonymous.  We called it tricking.

I think it's because we were living in a world inundated by images of men and women together, being told a hundred times a day that gay people did not exist, or if they did, they were monsters, and this was our way of rebelling, of relishing the look, smell, and feel of the masculine.

The adults are lying -- only real is real.

We made the trick arrangements with little or no prior conversation, no screening, no introduction to friends (unless we happened to be at the bar together).  Sometimes only a first name, sometimes only a nod.

We followed him home without telling anyone where we were going.

We started the sexual encounter the moment we got in the door, with no coffee, no conversation, no making out on the couch.

When we finished, we threw on our clothes, scribbled down a phone number that might or might not be the right one, and left.  No cuddling, no spending the night.

We might return to the bar that same night to search for a new trick, and see him there, in search of a new trick. "Next!"

And we never tricked with the same guy twice.  "Been there, done that."


In retrospect, it was extremely dangerous, although nothing bad happened except a case of crabs.

And a feeling of emptiness afterwards, as if we had just eaten a big meal but were still hungry.

Whatever our desire for the masculine meant, it wasn't satisfied by tricking.

One night we saw an older black guy standing by the pool table, drinking a soda: in his 40s, taller than me, very muscular and very dark.  Since I was particularly interested in black guys, Viju said that I could "have him."

He introduced himself as Ollie with a slightly lilting accent.

"That's a very Swedish," I commented.

"Short for Olawale.  I'm from Nigeria."

We drank our sodas and talked.  Ollie was from the Yoruba people -- there are about 30 million in western Nigeria,  Many African-Americans are descended from them.

He attended university in Lagos, a big, sprawling city of 5 million, and moved to London, which he hated, then to Austin, Texas; Buffalo, New York, and Little Rock, Arkansas.  He had been in Bloomington for ten years.  He worked in the library, where he was in charge of the African Studies collection, and occasionally taught courses in Yoruba.

In five minutes, I got more biography from Ollie than from a dozen other hookups put together.

I wanted to know about the Yoruba language, of course, so he gave me a brief primer:   it's a tonal language, like Chinese.

All words have combinations of high, middle, or low tones that change their meanings:

igba (middle-low): rope
igba (middle-middle): two hundred
igba (low-high): egg
igba (low-middle): nonsense

I almost forgot about the hookup.  But a grope and a kiss reminded me.

We said good night to Viju, and drove back to Ollie's house, in an older neighborhood a few blocks north of the campus.  The living room was painted red, with African tapestries and masks on the walls.

"Would you like to eat?" Ollie asked.  "In Nigeria it is very impolite to have a guest in your house without offering food.  I have some fried plantains -- they come from a special store in Indianapolis -- and vanilla ice cream."

We ate our plantains and ice cream while I leafed through his coffee table book on African art, and looked at the wide, thick, black bookcases filled to overflowing with books on ceremonial magic, paganism, the occult, ghosts, the paranormal, voodoo, werewolves -- it was like a precursor to the Bodhi Tree, the New Age bookstore I would visit later in West Hollywood.

"Are you a pagan?" I asked.  "I knew a male witch in Rock Island."

"I've studied every magical path, but my heritage is the Yoruba religion."

According to the Yoruba, the Creator God Olorun is unknowable, so we revere his emanations, the 400 or so orishas: Ogun, Shango, Eshu.  They are very beautiful, many appearing as muscular, nude men, each with his distinct personality.  Some are benevolent and eager to assist the humans who offer them the proper respect.

Others are -- well, not evil, exactly, but not terribly concerned with human affairs, and likely to get cranky if importuned.

"My Orisha is Erinle, the patron of gay people.  He breaks the boundaries of gender, and has relationships with men.  He walks hand in hand with his lover. Ochosi.  He's also the patron of physicians and fishermen.  Come, I'll summon him to bless our meeting."

He brought me into the bedroom, which had an enormous bed with a black conforter, a black-wood dresser, and a small table covered with African statues, silk cloths, beads, seashells, candles, a bottle of wine, and some incongruous items, like a can of sardines, a stethoscope, and a statue of Superman.

"Erinle likes fishing," Ollie explained.  "He blesses his disciples who eat fish.  And the stethoscope --he's the patron of physicians, right?"

"And the statue of Superman?"

"He's gay.  I thought he would find the muscles.appealing."

We took off our clothes and sat crosslegged before the altar.  Ollie lit one of the candles, bathing the room in eerie red light.  He poured a little of the wine into a cup, put it on the can of sardines, and began praying in Yoruba.

Later he told me that the words were "Fun mi agbara," give me power, a prayer for sexual potency.

He held out his penis for me to touch.  It was long and thick, with strange scarification: bumps all around the head.

"The penis is sacred to Erinle, too," Ollie said with a grin.

We moved to the bed.

Wow.

Ollie lay atop me, clamped his mouth on mine, and inserted his penis between my legs.  Several other positions followed, but what I will remember forever is Ollie's face above mine as he thrusts.  A broad open-mouthed grin.  His forehead beaded with sweat.  His eyes white with passion.

Afterwards we showered, and I spent the night.

We saw each other in the bar occasionally after that, but we didn't meet again.

But I learned something important.

If we go out searching for the archetype of masculinity, pure physique and penis, we can never be satisfied.  That is unknown and unknowable.  We must look for orishas, individual emanations of the divine, each with his own unique history, beliefs, and personality.

In other words, talk to the guy first, no matter how big he is beneath the belt.

See also: The 20 Most Beautiful Men in the World; and Encounters in the Darkroom of an American Gay Bar