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I’d been dating a girl for over a month—the girl I very much believed was my first girlfriend—
without ever having had a single conversation with her.
Now the whole night came rushing back and I saw it from her point of view, and it was
perfectly obvious to me why she didn’t want to get out of the car. She probably hadn’t wanted
to go to the dance with me in the first place; she probably owed Tom a favor, and Tom can
talk anyone into anything. Then I’d left her sitting and waiting for me for an hour and she
was pissed off. Then she got into the car and it was the first time we had ever been alone, and
she realized I couldn’t even hold a conversation with her. I’d driven her around and gotten
lost in the dark—a young girl alone in a car in the middle of nowhere with some strange guy,
no idea where I was taking her. She was probably terrified. Then we got to the dance and she
didn’t speak anyone’s language. She didn’t know anyone. She didn’t even know me.
Bongani and I stood outside the car, staring at each other. I didn’t know what to do. I
tried talking to her in every language I knew. Nothing worked. She only spoke Pedi. I got so
desperate that I started trying to talk to her using hand signals.
“Please. You. Me. Inside. Dance. Yes?”
“No.”
“Inside. Dance. Please?”
“No.”
I asked Bongani if he spoke Pedi. He didn’t. I ran inside to the dance and ran around
looking for someone who spoke Pedi to help me to convince her to come in. “Do you speak
Pedi? Do you speak Pedi? Do you speak Pedi?” Nobody spoke Pedi.
So I never got to go to my matric dance. Other than the three minutes I spent running
through it looking for someone who spoke Pedi, I spent the whole night in the parking lot.
When the dance ended, I climbed back into the shitty red Mazda and drove Babiki home. We
sat in total awkward silence the whole way.
I pulled up in front of her block of flats in Hillbrow, stopped the car, and sat for a
moment as I tried to figure out the polite and gentlemanly way to end the evening. Then, out
of nowhere, she leaned over and gave me a kiss. Like, a real kiss, a proper kiss. The kind of
kiss that made me forget that the whole disaster had just happened. I was so confused. I
didn’t know what I was supposed to do. She pulled back and I looked deep into her eyes and
thought, I have no idea how girls work.
I got out of the car, walked around to her side, and opened her door. She gathered up her
dress and stepped out and headed toward her flat, and as she turned to go I gave her one last
little wave.
“Bye.”
“Bye.”