SOMETHING IN MY TEETH?

Ndumiso Ngcobo wonders why so many people stare at him

ON Ronson’s The Men Who Stare At Goats is a fascinating book. It is about US Army officers who were obsessed with paranormal activities to the point where they created a psychic lab in Maryland. Some of the experiments were actually implemented at the infamous Guantanamo Bay torture “resort”.

There are unconfirmed reports that one of the officers became so adept at these psychic gymnastics that he managed to stare at a goat and “suggest” to it that it must shut down its vital organs. The goat apparently keeled over and died. Goat meat is, by far, the tastiest flesh I have ever consumed, so I couldn’t help but salivate when I read this. Sorry — I digress.

Where was I? Oh yes — so, you can imagine my consternation when I sat across from a woman who kept staring at me on the Gautrain last weekend. Just so we’re clear: I didn’t catch her looking at me from time to time. I mean that she was staring, the entire time.

Mrs N, the midgets and I had boarded the train at Marlboro. By the time we got to Midrand it was getting a tad awkward. By the time we got to Centurion it was downright creepy. So I changed seats and joined the rest of the family, seeing as a few seats had opened up. As we were disembarking in Pretoria, she was still staring at me with an expressionless face. I remember muttering to my left kidney, “Don’t die on me, man”.

Silliness aside, I just don’t get it. Why do we have so many gazers in this country? I have been to many countries and I have never experienced the level of people gazing we have in South Africa.

Two to three times a week, I take a 10km walk through my hood behind the Boerewors Curtain. One minute I’ll be minding my own business, planning the mansion I’ll build when my ancestors finally acknowledge the collective spiritual currency of all the goats I have slaughtered in their name and bestow upon me the R95-million Powerball jackpot; the next minute, there’s some guy chilling at the intersection, staring at me.

I’ll continue walking and ignore him. Still, there he is, staring at me. Usually, the best way to get folks to stop staring at you is to stare right back. But no. Not this fellow. Now I’m looking this guy straight in the eye and he’s completely undeterred. Maybe even oblivious. Whatever it is that he’s looking at, he’s totally engrossed. That’s when I start thinking about Guantanamo Bay. And I start worrying about men who stare at goats and possibly slightly chubby columnists.

I’m not sure why being stared at is so uncomfortable. People staring at you probably means that you’re worth looking at. But on the other hand, if there’s a horrific accident on the N3 North, chances are that if you’re on the N3 South, you’ll be stuck in traffic because rubberneckers are hoping to catch a glimpse of a severed limb or head. So you never know.

Mrs N is particularly sensitive about folks staring at her. She recently hypothesized that she was 0.01 seconds from spontaneous combustion from a gentleman in a white Toyota Corolla who was studying her with absolute concentration at a traffic light. I made a mental note to never marry a chemistry master’s graduate.

One of the idiosyncrasies of being a minor, C-list public figure such as myself is how people relate to you when they meet you. They’ve seen your face because you’ve been on TV often enough. Your outdated mug shot is at the top of your weekly column. So when they meet you, they’re thinking, where do I know him from? High school? Varsity? Church? Extra on Generations? And then it gets murky, leading to questions such as, “Uhlala kuyiphi i-section eTembisa?” (In which section of Tembisa do you live?)

Sometimes folks actually recognise you and that’s worse. At some point in my life I was co-host of a really popular Kaya FM breakfast show with my friend Kgomotso Matsunyane. While inside an outside broadcast van, we kept the window open to get some air. Some woman stood there, peering into the van. Every five minutes she’d mutter, “It’s really you guys”.

It reminded me of an incident I witnessed on Durban’s West Street in 1992, before it was named after a comrade. A guy in a battered Mazda 323 kept on staring at a gorgeous woman in the passenger seat of a sparkling BMW 3.25i cabriolet. Finally, the driver looked at Mr Mazda and asked, “Kwenzenjani baba? Ulahlekelwe yintombi emotweni enhle yini?” (Did you misplace your girlfriend inside a beautiful car, sir?)

Not all staring is negative, though. Picture it. OR Tambo CNA. 2009. I’m browsing through books. An elderly gentleman is doing the same. He picks up my second book,

Is it Coz I’m Black?. He flips it over. There’s a mug shot of me in a hideous cap. I see the old geezer frown, look at the picture with concentration, look at me, look back at the picture. As it so happened I was, at that very moment, wearing the same Gwede cap that my friend Lungelo Yili said made me look like a ZCC member who has just won a tender to sweep Park Station.

The old geezer’s jaw dropped to the floor and he stared at me. He started to say something but I stopped him: “Yes, I wrote that. But I’m just glad that I’m not a goat”.

He slunk away with a perplexed look. And oh, he didn’t buy the book. LS E-mail lifestyle@sundaytimes.co.za On Twitter @NdumisoNgcobo