Eva Mazza - Sex, Lies & Stellenbosch

She couldn’t believe how much she had been prepared to risk◦– how much was at stake if Lee ever found out.

She had more to lose than John; maybe that’s why he could be less careful. She wasn’t from Stellenbosch and she certainly hadn’t had an easy childhood. She had come a long way from being Moorreesburg’s mattress. She couldn’t tolerate losing the windfall of landing Lee as a husband by means of sexual savvy. Which could well be her downfall if she didn’t rein herself in. Her mother had always said that Frankie would either be somebody or nobody, but that her inability to control her impulses would probably ruin her eventually.

Or save her.

At ten, her uncle, referred to by her siblings as Creepy Craig, had lured her into a bedroom at a Christmas party. The adults had been too drunk to notice the two were missing, and her mom had been too distracted by her new boyfriend to care. Once he and Frankie were in the bedroom, he gave her a toffee. She put it into her mouth and began to chew. He warned her she would break her teeth, and he popped one into his own fat, jowly mouth, showing her how to suck on it. “That way, my darling, you learn to draw the juice from it.”

Frankie knew something wasn’t quite right and began to ask for her mother.

“Your mommy’s busy with her new boyfriend. She said I must look after you,” he had said. “Let’s play a game.”

“I don’t want to play a game,” she whined.

Her uncle wasn’t listening. He had held up his fingers. Ten little pork sausages. To this day, she still couldn’t abide the sight of a pork sausage. He had put his stubby, fat index finger in his mouth and sucked on it. She watched him, revolted.

“Sis! What are you doing?” she asked. He ignored her question. Instead, he held the very same finger up to her mouth.

“Now you suck it.”

“What? Your finger?” her mouth had pulled up in disgust.

She could see she was irritating him. “Yes. Like I was doing.”

“Why?” she asked.

“Because we’re playing a game.”

“Well I don’t want to play your stupid game,” she’d said as she got up to leave the room. He grabbed her arm to stop her.

With hindsight, he was probably grooming her for other things, but she would never know, because when he grabbed her, she had kicked him on the shin, hard. Creepy Craig howled in pain. She remembered that he had tried to smack her, but he was too fat to be quick. The thought made her smile. She had learnt from her brothers that the groin was the most vulnerable and promising place for a girl to strike, so she had kicked him again, this time between his thighs. The adults had heard his screams and they stopped what they were doing to investigate.

Creepy Craig was never seen again, and although Frankie didn’t really understand at the time what her uncle was trying to get her to do, on a subliminal level she knew there was something deviant in his behaviour.

She flicked through the cellphone pics she had sent to John. Most of them were sexy pouts and poses, but there were other, more illicit photos that could get her into deep trouble should they ever be found.

She remembered stumbling across her brothers’ collection of porn magazines when she was a young girl and showing them to her mother only after viewing every disgusting page. “Where did you find these?” her mother had shrieked. She had explained that she had found them under her siblings’ beds.

“What were you doing snooping in their bedroom?”

Her mother had admonished her and not her brothers. “Boys will be boys,” she had said after she scolded her daughter for being a snoop.

The phone was ringing. It was Clive.

“What you up to?” he asked.

“Shouldn’t you be at lectures? It’s Monday.”

“Thanks for reminding me what day it is. I only start at ten. Can’t a son phone his mother to say hello?” Frankie laughed, knowing that Clive never phoned to just say hello.

“I’m terribly flattered, but I’m also not stupid. What’s up, Clive?”

She walked towards the mirror and looked at her reflection, not really seeing anything.

“I’m sorry I missed Uncle John’s birthday. Is Dad pissed off?” Frankie straightened up and turned around trying to assess the size of her ass. She did have a beautiful butt.

“He didn’t say anything to me. I’m not sure he even noticed, but it is bad manners, Clive, and you know it. Where were you?”

Clive explained that he had meant to come after his digs mate’s twenty-first, but he had drunk too much.

“Well, I guess boys will be boys,” she said, echoing her mother.

Mom had not felt the same way about girls being girls . Especially when she had been called to the office because her fifteen-year-old daughter had been giving blowjobs behind the school tuckshop. At sixteen she had formally broken her virginity with the head boy.

Her mother did not put it down to her being a girl when she was suspended for a month in her final year at school. She remembered her storming into their house after meeting with the principal and Frankie’s teacher.

“You are such a slut!” she had yelled at her daughter. “It’s bad enough I’ve had to deal with your shenanigans with other boys. But now, the teacher! And such a nice young man. He says you have been coming on to him from his first day at school! Have you no shame?”

Slut shaming at its best, Frankie thought; although it was true. She had to admit that she had pursued the poor young teacher relentlessly. When she eventually had Mr Samuels alone in the classroom for extra maths, he had explained at the meeting that “There was nothing I could have done to avoid her advances. I’m not a monk and I wasn’t trained how to avoid such situations at college. I’m really, really sorry.”

By the time she had left school, her pass was as bad as her reputation. She knew that if she wanted to get anywhere in life, she couldn’t rely on her academic record, or on any of the boys in her town, for that matter. No one would forgive a girl for just being a girl.

It was by fluke that she had walked into the bar of the local hotel on a cold Friday night with Jay, her newly acquired and only girl friend. A group of men was seated in front of the bar’s television watching the rugby game. Her future husband had turned around to find a waitress and he had locked eyes with Frankie. Although he had seemed a lot older than her, she knew how to lure men, and Lee would be no exception.

They began to chat. She asked him what the hell he was doing in “this dead-end place”. He had laughed that beguiling laugh and said that he was just passing through.

“I would love to hitch a ride out of this town and never come back. Maybe you’re my knight in shining armour?” she had flirted.

It was never Frankie’s style to feign innocence. She told Lee she had been through just about all the men in her town and, if it must be known, “None of them are worth the dicks they’re carrying between their thighs.”

Before the night was over, Lee had missed the entire rugby game and had taken Frankie up to his hotel bedroom where he proved to her he deserved the organ that defined him as a man. Lee had thought she would be a one-night stand. She hadn’t been offended; she knew that her type was born to be one-night stands.

“I don’t know why,” he had said after three weeks of dating her, “but I think I’m falling in love with you.”

Frankie had laughed at him as she punched him gently on the chest. “Is that such a bad thing, Lee? What’s so wrong with falling for me?”

“Well, you know…” Ever the gentleman, he had tried hard not to hurt her feelings. “You must meet my folks,” he had said, determined. “Once they know you, I know they’ll like you.”