Inside the lazy, deluded daze of the ‘blessed’
A 20-year-old’s affair with a rich man gives her a fairytale few months but distorts her outlook, writes Kwanele Ndlovu
WALK OF SHAME: The future for young women who eagerly trade sex for a brief period of luxury can be grim as looks fade and warped values and lost opportunities take their toll
IREMEMBER an incident from not so long ago. I had just pulled in to a service station in the east of Johannesburg. My passenger was a lady friend, a few years younger than me, whose traces of beauty are encouraged with branded makeup daily. She had once been famous for a whole 15 minutes. That was years back. Her inconsequential prominence had diminished with the number of likes on her Facebook post. On this day, she boasted only the ever-sopicturesque memory of her glory days.
I could read the excitement in her eyes as she pointed to a sparkling Range Rover Evoque, saying her boyfriend had promised he would buy her one very soon. I knew the boyfriend. He drove a, let’s say, “mature” German coupé and that was an upgrade for him. He was a well-paid employee living in a rented apartment and my maths was good enough to conclude that the promise must have been made somewhere between a spliff and a bout of sexual activity.
But it was not the Evoque reverie that brought about my consternation. No. I had to adjust my seating position, tighten my grip on the steering wheel of a stationary car and gawk at this woman for a good 42 seconds in order to digest what she then said: “. . . he said he prefers the X5 but I don’t like it, hey. OK, if he insists on buying me the X5, maybe I will settle for it, but I love the Evoque. Wooooh, just look at the rims!”
Perhaps I was naive and lacked financial imagination. This was an unemployed woman whose attempt at tertiary education had been abruptly halted by fabulosity and the social demands and duties associated with being sexy.
She had been a waitress at some stage, and a promotions girl, sometimes. She had never earned a salary close to even half of the monthly instalment of an X5! Settle? She felt being given an X5 would be settling?
I was numbed. We were sitting in an Opel Corsa, mind you, and even that was out of her financial reach.
Then I remembered that the lady’s overview of acquisitions, assets, affordability and basic accounting had been obscured by one man in particular. See, the lady had a rich history of pulling a short stint as a mistress to a wealthy man. I had been audience to her extravagant tales of international travel and shopping sprees. Europe had once been her playground and she had pictures and a few thousand “Likes” to prove it.
This fairytale episode had occurred during the first year of her twenties. She had hardly had time to formulate her own life plan.
She found herself never wanting for anything. Her only trade was to please this man and be at his beck and call.
It was his random demands for her company that meant she could not be in formal employment. His purse had suppressed any entrepreneurial aspirations. She had been catapulted into an illusion of wealth and invincibility.
Her reality, however, remained dusty and chaotic. Away from the company of this man, she was a township girl whose
You will be poor all your life if you settle for a broke man. Shame, I can’t!
world was secured in her parents’ home, in a bedroom she shared with her sister.
She was still subjected to calculating change for R12 times four from R100 whenever she graced the front seat of a taxi to town. Nevertheless, she took comfort in the fact that her weave and nails were on point.
When I questioned her characterising a BMW X5 as “settling”, she replied that she had “lived and hustled” enough to know her worth. A man had to be able to provide for everything she wanted. “I know how to satisfy a man, and that’s why I can’t stand broke men . . .”
Clearly the past relationship with the wealthy man had had far-reaching and unfortunate consequences, far worse than a false sense of class and sophistication. He had taught her a culture of transactional sex disguised as love and care.
She had since spent her life expecting rich men to save her from her laziness. She felt that her sexual exploits must be rewarded with a few thousand rands here and there. All her dreams were reliant on financial assistance from a man.
“You will be poor all your life if you settle for a broke man. Shame, I can’t!”
She was basing her entire worth on how much a man was willing to give her, all of which would be spent on the upkeep of her beauty.
Yes, a woman whose most valuable assets were an iPhone and a Gucci bag was lecturing me on worth.
While her lovers had built businesses and secured financial stability for themselves and their wives and children, she had been a beneficiary of their crumbs.