After four years of misery and endurance, I moved on to Rhodes University, in Grahamstown, in the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa. The university’s motto is Where Leaders Learn, and another Smith alumnus, Ian, put this maxim into practice by becoming Prime Minister of Rhodesia in 1964. I directed my energies in a very different way however, as paradise opened before me. Suddenly there were girls who did not wear gym slips and walk primly to church in crocodile formation. Up until that moment I had never dreamt of how soft and warm these gorgeous creatures were, or how sweet they smelled. “Whoever loved that loved not at first sight?” as Shakespeare put it in As You Like It.
I was in Matthews, part of Founders Hall, and I soon found my way to the leading women’s Residence, Oriel, named after Oxford’s Oriel College. I fell for a girl who was in her second year. Her boyfriend was a lawyer in Port Elizabeth but she took a shine to me, a bumbling first year, naive and eager to please, but longing for adventure and new experiences. Within a week I discovered, to my joy, that the mouth wasn’t the only way to give pleasure during sex. She was beautiful and we became lovers, unable to resist the commingling of our bodies, such wildly liberating tenderness. She needed to have a pass to be out late from Res but, typically in those days, I didn’t need one because it didn’t apply to male students. One night we went up past the tennis courts to a secluded spot and after the fun was over, we both fell blissfully asleep under the stars. We got back to Oriel well past midnight and, because she didn’t have a pass, the senior girls nailed her. They turned her in. She mentioned my name and we were both sent up to the Vice Chancellor, Dr. Thomas Alty, to explain ourselves.
There was no mitigation for the girl as far as he was concerned, so he rusticated her. Then it was my turn. He called me into his office and I thought I’d had it, that I was going to be sent down. “Smith,” the Vice Chancellor said, looking me over, “this is a very serious offense.”
“Yes, it is, sir,” I replied, looking at the floor, trying to appear contrite. There was silence, he seemed to be taking time to consider my sentence, or else he wanted to see me squirm, or perhaps he was simply imagining our sinful coupling, assessing its full weight and heated consequence. Then he said: “The young lady you were with, she’s a pretty young thing, but she already has a reputation for being a bad girl.” I nodded and inwardly smiled, remembering our delicious cavorting and her enthusiasm. The Vice Chancellor continued: “I think you were the innocent party in this, so we’re going to give you a dispensation this time. Don’t let it happen again.”
I didn’t, because I never got caught again, but I felt sorry for the girl. She took all the blame and that was wrong. However, from then on, I dreamed of very little else but the opposite sex. Even books were forgotten in the feverish excitement of this new discovery. I became an expert at scaling the drainpipes at the various girls’ Residential halls. I was a bit of a wild boy from the bush and girls seemed to like my derring-do, my disregard for rules and regulations which I thought were antiquated and joyless. I worked during the long university vacations and bought a Model T Ford, for £7 10s. The car was painted pink with sky blue mudguards and it had a sign on the back that said, “Peaches, this is your can.” Yes, I know, I cringe now, but that was then when the floodgates had opened for the first time. The car had no seats in the back so we filled the space with mattresses. I had money left over from my vacation jobs, I had wheels and could travel, and my amorous experimentations went into overdrive.
I never saw my lover again after the meeting with the Vice Chancellor. But one day, at the end of 1999, I was driving through Kenilworth in Cape Town and stopped at a robot (traffic lights). Something made me turn my head and there, in the car next to me, was the girl I had loved at university, now a rather matronly woman. The encounter sent a sensuous shiver down my spine, but it was also like seeing a ghost, a spirit calling to me from so many years ago. She said nothing, just looked at me and mouthed, “Wilbur,” smiled, and drove off as the lights turned green.
Being sent down was just one of the risks in those days. We didn’t have to contend with HIV and AIDS like today, but there was the age-old worry of getting a girl pregnant. We were very nervous about our contraceptives. The girl would say: “It’s okay, I’ve just had my period,” or something along those lines, and peace of mind would be restored. Sometimes we would take the condoms and wash them to save money. We’d put talcum powder on them to dry them out. Some of them we used three or four times, some half a dozen times. We’d blow them up and put them to our ears to check they weren’t leaking. This is not a means of using contraceptives I’m recommending in any way! Even recalling our exploits as I’m doing now brings the color to my cheeks at how reckless and disrespectful we were, but back then, needs must.
Consuming large amounts of alcohol, getting smashed and testing one’s drinking limits are rites of passage at university. Competitive drinking was something of a sport, and great fun, but brought with it the obvious hazards of bad behavior, falling over, and general stupidity. I was accomplished at the general stupidity, but I could also hold my drink. I had had my first taste of alcohol at the age of thirteen after one of my parents’ parties during my summer vacations when I sampled the dregs of the leftovers. They tasted vile and I couldn’t understand the appeal of drinking so I kept on drinking the leavings to see what it was that adults enjoyed so much. After a brief flash of euphoria, I threw up at the back of the house and then wobbled into my bed thinking my brain was about to explode. Strangely I didn’t have a hangover in the morning; perhaps I hadn’t drunk so much after all? The pleasures of alcohol remained an obscure mystery until I went to Rhodes and developed a taste for Castle Special. It was nine pence a quart and one quart would do you! In fact, my first hangover was at university, after a rugby match. I made my own cocktail—the most disgusting concoction ever, no one else would drink it. It consisted of Castle beer mixed with tomato juice, a sort of health shandy but with high alcohol content, years ahead of its time. I should have patented it.
Another bad habit I acquired at university was gambling, but my best friend’s father, a highly-respected headmaster told me that gambling is no fun unless you play it for stakes you can’t afford. I thought about that and gave it up in an instant.
•••
All too soon, my four years at Rhodes were up. It was time to go out, learn about real life and get a job. I’d wanted to be a journalist, following my love for writing, or become a big game hunter. But my father had told me straight to get a proper job.
I’d taken his advice and was now an accountant with a degree—something that still surprised me. On graduation, I didn’t head home first, I went down to Port Elizabeth where I’d got a job as an executive trainee at Goodyear Tire and Rubber. My first salary was £27 a month; it was OK, I lived well on it. I ran a car and was able to romance a few ladies, buy a few drinks. I was having a good time. Such a good time in fact, that within six months of adult life I was married—and I wasn’t even twenty-four.
I might have moved to Port Elizabeth, but it was only 110 kms away from Grahamstown and I hadn’t really left my student days behind. I still had an impetuous sense of adventure.
That Easter, I headed up to Johannesburg to spend time with a dear old varsity friend of mine called Larry King, who was 5′2″, Jewish and a natural comic. He was hysterically funny. We were at the Rand Easter Show, bellied up to the bar in the tent. Also attending the event was an American wrestler who had entered the tent and was looking around for a drink. His name was Sky-High Lee and he stood 7′2″ in his socks.
Larry and I were talking about a trick where you slip behind a fellow when he’s not expecting it. You stand back to back and grab him by the seat of the pants and start walking forward. He ends up off balance and you can take him anywhere you want.
Sky-High Lee wandered over to the bar and I whispered to Larry, who had already had a couple of jars, to do the trick on him. Larry eyed Sky-High Lee, craning his neck as he looked up, and said: “You’re joking.”
“No, nonsense, of course you can do it, don’t be all talk,” I said.
Larry considered, then said: “You know, come to think of it, I could do it!”
“Well don’t tell us, show us!”
Larry put his drink on the bar counter and began backing up to Sky-High. He couldn’t reach high enough to get him by the seat of his pants so he grabbed the back of his coat. He then started walking. Sky-High was just lifting his glass to his lips, when he felt the tugging behind him. He slowly put his glass down and nonchalantly turned around to see this strange little man, flushed in the face, standing there plaintively apologizing: “Sorry, Mr. Lee, sorry, Mr. Lee.”
Sky-High bent down, took Larry by the lapels of his coat and lifted him up in the air. He held him aloft, with Larry’s feet dangling about a foot off the ground, and looked at him with amazement, like he’d discovered a new species of insect. Then he shook his head and dropped Larry right onto his feet and turned back to his beer.
I’ll never forget that. I wanted to applaud. It was the perfect put-down. He didn’t punch him. He just couldn’t believe that this little guy had tried to intimidate him.
Larry and I had some memorable times together, pranking each other, drinking too much; we were unleashed and carefree, refusing to accept we were no longer students. Tragically Larry would later die in a car crash. I miss him.