Psst! Let me holler in your ear
Here’s a fun, wholesome thing to do. Next time you’re invited to one of those couples’ braais we are all subjected to on Saturday evenings, switch things up a little. I don’t know about your circles, but in mine the men gravitate towards each other to talk about how much of a douche Arsenal coach Emery is and the women share war stories with each other about — I don’t know — how far along they are at potty training us.
However, I have discovered the joy of peeling off from the group of wannabe English Premiership pundits, isolating one of the wives and chatting to them. Central to my evil plan is having a bottle of gin or whisky that I use to fill up her glass every time it reaches the halfway mark. After about 20 minutes something wonderful happens: her tongue loosens up and I receive chunks of delicious, juicy gossip.
The reason I perform this exercise is because, after 15 years of swimming in matrimonial waters, I have concluded that nobody skinners more than married couples. A bunch of women in allwhite outfits sipping on Moët & Chandon during a baby shower at the Walter Sisulu Botanical
Gardens have nothing on a wife and husband in their kitchen on a random Tuesday evening.
This particular penny dropped for me after years of catching my mates’ wives staring at me with knowing, amused looks on their faces during social gatherings. After one such stare-a-thon I rushed to my friend and yelled, “You bastard! You told Thandi about that Vilakazi Street incident, didn’t you? Didn’t you!” My friend was so sloshed he didn’t even try to deny it: “Sorry man. She got it out of me.”
I have been paying attention to the frequency of debriefing sessions between Mrs N and me in recent years. Man, it is intense! I’ll enter the house after having drinks with a friend and before the Uber driver even reverses out of the driveway, she says, “So, how is Mogale doing?”
This is how I know that I’d make the worst Isis operative in the world. Within three seconds I’m in full cry, putting that canary Angelo Agrizzi to shame. None of my friends’ secrets are safe with me when I’m in the kitchen, chopping carrots for the
Boss of Me (BOM).
I used to be ashamed of this until an incident opened my eyes to the universality of this phenomenon. A mate’s missus, Tshepiso, confided to the BOM about some transgression by my mate, Nathi. Naturally, she told me as soon as she got off the phone. In the interests of helping him out, I surreptitiously called him and warned him to watch out. Only someone with terrible pattern recognition skills could not predict
No-one knows who we’re talking about. It’s a simple matter of assigning code names. I know, I know — we’re terrible people
what happened next. Correctamundo! He immediately turns to her in their house and goes, “I cannot believe that you’d share our marital issues with the BOM and Ndumiso!”
After Tshepiso was done yelling at the BOM for betraying her and the BOM was done chastising me and I was done bleating at Nathi, “B-b-but why would you tell her? I was only trying to warn you!”, we sat there with sunny-side-up eggs on our faces, yolk dripping on our chests.
I don’t know about your relationship, but in ours we gossip about everybody. No-one is spared. Friends, colleagues, our parents, siblings and even our own kids. With our kids we even do it with them sitting in the same room. All we do is go off in isiZulu that is deeper than the superficial version they grasp. Or we use the BOM’s first language, sePitori, Pretoria township slang.
We’ve mastered the art of talking about folks such that no-one knows who we’re talking about. It’s a simple matter of assigning code names. We have The Creature, The Hoover, The Bear, The Panda Bear, Slowhands, Alice in Wonderland … I know, I know — we’re terrible people.
In our defence, marriage is a difficult setup with serious challenges. Gossiping about other people’s lives provides welcome relief and gives one the delusional comfort that one’s own life is not so bad after all.
I don’t care about your politics, but you have to admit that there are few things more entertaining than listening to EFF pressers when their commander-in-chief is speaking off the cuff. This is especially true since he got married and has a regular partner-in-crime in the sharing-offiles business.
Life in the Malema household must be a rollercoaster. Journalists don’t even have to ask him questions in full sentences. He just needs a keyword like “Pravin” and then he out-Agrizzies Agrizzi, “Yho, yho, yho! Disaster! Worst mistake!”