A Temporary Good-bye

Dear Friends and Family,

In a few minutes I have to go close my student account and forsake internet access. On Sunday, I leave for my 20-day camping expedition with Nomad Tours that will take me through Namibia, Botswana, and land me in Zimbabwe at Victoria Falls. Then I return to South Africa for a two-week road trip across SA's famed garden route. I will be out of contact for a while, but I am not saying good-bye yet to this blog. I'm hoping to return to such primitive methods of documentation as paper and pen while on the trip, and then at some point type it all up and post it. But I want to say thank you to all of you who have supported I Bless the Rains this semester. I miss you all and, while I am very excited about this next month of adventures, I am looking forward to my return home at the beginning of August.

So if you are still interested, be on the lookout for updates around the end of July. Enjoy yourselves and take care!

Love,

Jill

Spy Games: A Tribute to Geraldine

Things are quiet here in A320. Geraldine left two weeks ago.

She left suddenly; she was supposed to go in July, but her mom was working on getting her an earlier flight. On Saturday the 9th, her mom e-mailed to tell her that her flight was on the 12th. A whirlwind three days ensued, during which Geral packed all her things, closed all her accounts, and then left. Barbora and I, in a rare and spontaneous move, went to a pub and drank to forget her.

It didn't work, though, at least not for long (we were distracted for a little while by a bartender who could balance, I am not kidding, an entire table on his chin, and also a three-tiered pyramid of beer bottles on giant trays, set on top of a single upsidedown beerbottle, the mouth of which was balanced, let me say this again, on his chin), because I still remember her. Geraldine believes in fate and destiny and souls and other things that I've always considered slightly ridiculous, but that Geraldine makes seem not ridiculous at all. She has been enormously instrumental in helping me open my mind, which I hadn't realized was closed. She always washed the dishes. If you finished eating and put your plate down and turned your back even for a second, she would snatch up your plate and wash it. She takes amazing pictures; she has this way of capturing people at the most perfect, expressive moments. And she has a camera with a badass zoom. She also helped me train to become a spy, which has been a dream of mine for many years, but which I had reluctantly cast aside due to the fact that I have no stealth. At all. So I believed. Until Geraldine helped me prove myself wrong.

At the beginning of the month, Susan left for a three-week trip, and left her laptop in Geral's care. Before leaving, Susan got on DC++ and downloaded season 3 of Lost for Barbora and me. Geral goes to bed very early. Barbora and I go to bed very late. So in the week before Geral left, Barbora and I would stay up late watching Lost, and it became my mission each night when we were done to get into Geral's room and replace the computer without waking her up.

At first, it was terrible. I never saw Geral wake up while I was in the room, but each morning I'd come out to the common room to find out how I'd done, and she'd shake her head. "I heard you opening the door" she'd say. Or, "I woke up when you put it on the desk." One night, around 4 am, I literally had my hand poised in front of the door, ready to push it open and sneak in, when I heard her voice from within: "Don't bother, Jill, I'm already awake."

And finally one night it happened: I got the laptop in and on the desk without waking her up. So we decided it was time for a mission upgrade.

It was two nights before Geral left. Barbora and I were done with Lost. Geral said she would take the computer into her room that night and leave it on the desk. She would hide a number somewhere in the computer. My job was to get into the room, start up the computer, retrieve the number, put her Jack Johnson CD at low volume, and get out - all without waking her up.

Immediately I started planning, drawing upon the knowledge that I'd acquired on my previous attempted missions. The door creaks if you open it slowly: I would have to push it open in one swift, fluid movement. Lingering in the doorway creates sleep-disrupting shadows: I would have to duck into the room as soon as the door was open.

I chose what I thought seemed like optimum spy hour: 2 am. And I realized something: probably the reason that I had failed on so many previous missions was that I was not wearing proper spy gear. So this time, I dressed for the occassion.

Barbora: "I sure as hell hope you don't wake her up, if she sees you, she'll probably never sleep again."

At 2:00, disguised as a shadow, I padded across the common room and flung open Geraldine's door in one swift, fluid movement. It didn't creak. I hurried inside. The computer was on her desk, already open, but with a screensaver on. Angling my body to disguise the change in light intensity, I touched the mouse. Geraldine stirred in bed, but remained asleep. I crossed my fingers and opened Microsoft Word 2003. Clicking file, I scanned the list of recent documents. Nothing. My heart sank. Geral stirred again. I turned back to the computer. Then I saw it. Nestled between Susan's academic papers and course syllabi and what have you, was a document called "Butternut soup." Geraldine and I love butternut soup. I opened the document. And found this message:

"Congratulations Jill. The number is 8."

I smiled to myself, closed the document, exited Word, opened iTunes, put on Jack Johnson, and left the room on feet of feathers, closing the door behind me in another swift, fluid movement.

The next day, Geraldine confirmed my success. And I now have a newfound confidence in my ability to become an international superspy.

Geral is one of those magical people with her own gravitational force or something. I loved talking to her, and at the same time I think I was always a little afraid of her. Not because of anything she did, but just because there is something she has in her personality that is indescribable and so, so unique. I have simply never encountered anyone like her in my entire life. I guess you can say that about anyone; I can even say it about Joy. But with Geraldine it is particularly true. It's funny because even though our conversations about fate and destiny vs. choice and chance and consequences all ended in a sort of 'agree to disagree' truce, it's almost hard for me to believe that it wasn't fate that I met Geral. There were hundreds of international students. I could have been stuck in a flat with anyone. How did I get so lucky? It's very rare in life that you find someone who will wash your dishes.

So here's to Geraldine, and to fate, to souls, to dishes, to amazing photographs, to stealth.

The Ikaya Gazette

English tutoring in Kayamandi ended a couple of weeks ago. The students' final project was to write an article for a school newspaper. They could write about anything they wanted: their school, their families, sports, national and international events, the community, etc. Then we took all the articles and made a newspaper called The Ikaya Gazette, complete with photos taken by the students. I don't know if anything I've seen or done here in South Africa has made me feel as simultaneously ignorant, moved, confused, and impressed as the Ikaya Gazette. There were articles about everything from the school netball team to shopping trips in Cape Town to the government's broken promise to replace the shacks in townships like Kayamandi with actual houses (actually, the government is replacing some of the shacks in Kayamandi with houses - the ones closest to the road, so that people don't have to stare that kind of abject poverty in the face when they drive by. They're renovating the parts of Kayamandi that the tourists might see when they come for the World Cup in 2010. Thanks, government. You're a real pal.) There was an editorial saying that teachers should stop beating students ("Well duh," I thought reading it, and then I felt guilty and ignorant, because I had no idea that teachers in Kayamandi did beat students, and then I felt even more guilty and ignorant for thinking, 'well, I guess you would expect that kind of thing in a place like this...'), and another about how men should stop abusing and raping women and children. I didn't even know what rape was until I was in fifth grade. Some of these kids have witnessed it, and some have experienced it, and I can't quite wrap my mind around that. I wish that I was the kind of person who could just go in there and help in any way I can, and not judge, or flinch back, or feel guilty. But it's so strange. This big group of white university students, mostly from the U.S. and Europe, studying abroad at a white, Afrikaans-speaking university, come into this township every Wednesday in big shiny vans to help black, Xhosa-speaking children living in a community cut off from and shunned by the Afrikaaner-dominated town it's supposedly a part of learn the English language. If I lived in a shack, would I give a shit what an internal rhyme was? If I lived with the constant possibility of being beaten or raped, what good would it do me to know when to use a period and when to use a comma? If I didn't have food or clean water, would I want to write a newspaper article about netball? These kids are so friendly and vivacious and intelligent. But they play in fields and playgrounds covered in broken glass (Barbora found a knife under one of the trees by the school a couple weeks ago, and a kid grabbed it and she spent about ten minutes trying to bribe him to give it to her.) They come to class sometimes with bruises and scrapes and you don't know if they're from playing or fighting or something else. I guess there's some fundamental ignorant, prejudiced part of me that doesn't understand how they can be happy, living like this. And another idealistic, hopeful part of me that believes that human beings make their own happiness, and hates that other part of me for believing that happiness is directly linked to the material. People survive however they can. I do believe that people can make their own happiness, but at the same time it's so hard for me to imagine living in Kayamandi and still functioning as a human being. Several students wrote articles about Kayamandi, calling it a "beautiful place," and saying how much they love it. The kids who wrote articles about their lives wrote about "normal" things: hanging out with their friends, going shopping, playing sports, etc. I feel like I'm really rambling here, and I think my thesis is this: That Kayamandi is an unforgettable and beautiful place in many ways, but I still can't quite reconcile it with the way I believe that human beings should live. I'm still a little appalled and confused by it. I feel that my volunteering efforts there have been weak, and motivated more by a sense of guilt than a genuine desire to help. That is an ugly thing to have to realize about yourself. I think I was sort of expecting South Africa to lend me a strength that I don't really possess as a person. I saw my life, my abilities, my purpose coming clear to me here. But it turns out that I'm the same person here that I was back in America, except more confused and less sure of myself. It's okay. It's not so bad. I think thwarted expectations are part of any learning process. I'll save further introspection for my summation article in a couple of weeks. What I want to do now is share my favorite article from the Ikaya Gazette. There were so many good articles, but there is something about this one that I especially love:

My Life
by Nkosinathi Gege

I was born on 21 July 1994 and I am 12 years old now. I live with my parents in Snack Valley and we have two floors. I stay with my parents, two brothers, and a sister. I love my family because they do everything for me. Especially my family, I love them because they brought me to school and that is why I love my parents.

When I was young, I saw a plane flying in the sky. In the future, I want to become a pilot because I can go everywhere I want. It is very cool to drive a plane, and I will help my friends and the school to build a better Kayamandi. If I have money, I will move to Stellenbosch with my family. And I will have a nice girlfriend and she is going to be beautiful and we will always be happy with my family.

I will fly by plane. And people can travel to America, Durban, to China and USA by my plane.

Now I have to work hard studying to become a pilot.

Some Afrikaans Poetry

Spar

Vandag het ek gegaan na Spar,
Om te sien wat was beskikbaar -
Melk, eires, en veerlik drank,
Maar nie liefde gevind op die plank.


English Translation:

Today I went to Spar,
To see what was available -
Milk, eggs, and delicious liquor,
But no love did I find on the shelf.


Wat Doen Jy Met die Mes?
(for Barbora)

Wat doen jy met die mes?
Slag 'n kind, steek my vleis?
Jy is wreed, jy is mal;
My bloed vlekke rooi jou wit wal.


English Translation:

What are you doing with the knife?
Kill a child, stab my flesh?
You are crazy, you are cruel;
My blood stains red your whitewashed wall.


Roosterbrood

Ek is lief vir my roosterbrood,
Dit is baie, baie goed.
Met heuning, konfyt, of knoffel botter,
Roosterbrood het moed.
Hoewel ek eet my roosterbrood
Tot ek bars my voeg,
Jy moet stem saam dat agt snye
Is meer as genoeg!


English Translation:

I love my toast,
It is very, very good.
With honey, jam, or garlic butter,
Toast has spirit.
Although I eat my toast
Until I burst at the seams,
You must admit that eight slices
Is more than enough!

(This poem was written in honor of a toast-eating competition Barbora and I held a few weeks ago that nearly claimed both our lives. We each ate eight pieces, and then we ran out of bread. It was disgusting. In a poetic way.)

A Shark Bit the Cage

First of all, can anyone explain to me why Blogger will no longer let me publish photographs? I want you all to see my orange fisherman coat that smelled like dead fish.

Second of all, A SHARK BIT THE CAGE.

And all I asked for was semi-aggressive bumping.

I was not in the cage when it happened, though. More on that in a minute.

Let's start at the beginning...

(Ripply flashback thing)

My day began at 5 in the morning, when I decided that I no longer wanted to go shark cage diving, because it was 5 in the morning. Eventually I got myself up, went outside (Quick shout out to Erin Bunting and family: When I went to pick up my backpack, it was really heavy. ‘Why is this so heavy?’ I asked myself. I opened the front compartment and found a butternut squash and a telephone. These were from a shopping trip and a theatre rehearsal, respectively. But of course I thought of Squashphone.), and met Susan, who informed me that she had made a small oversight in planning because the shark diving place wasn't actually IN Hermanus per say - it was actually somewhere PAST Hermanus in a town we'd never heard of. We had allowed ourselves 2 hours to get to Hermanus, which I was already a little wary about, as I recalled that the first time we went to Hermanus, we were driving for 2 hours and twenty minutes. I had a sneaking suspicion that going somewhere beyond Hermanus would take even longer.

"I was going to call Suliman last night, and tell him we should leave earlier," said Susan. "But I thought he might be sleeping. So I decided to just wait until this morning and tell him to drive fast."

So we told Suliman to drive fast. And he did. We also took the N2 instead of the N1, which you're not supposed to do because people stand on bridges and drop rocks on your car and kill you on the N2. But the N2 is much faster. And after a stressful hour and fifty minutes, we arrived in Gansbaai - ten minutes early, and the first ones there.

The served us a delicious breakfast comprised of unrecognizable things. Then we watched a video that informed us that 652 people were killed by chairs last year, and only four were killed by sharks. Also, humans kill 100,000 sharks every year. After seeing those statistics, I feel kind of bad about everything I said about sharks loving to kill humans. Because really, those stats make it look kind of like we love killing sharks.

Some things I learned on my sharkventure:

-Sharks see in color.
-There is a handle inside the cage that you are allowed to hold onto
-The cage is not made of Linkin' Logs. It is made of drinking straws.
-Sharks are attracted to urine.
-If a marine biologist tells you to keep your hands off the black floaty things - keep your goddamn hands off the black floaty things.
-Nobody has ever seen great white sharks mate.
-I am not immune to seasickness just because I believe I should be.

The experience went something like this:

We boarded our boat, which was called the Shark Fever. We motored out to Dyer Island, which is where they film on the Planet Earth and Discovery Channel stuff. It is home to penguins, seals, whales, dolphins, and sharks. We anchored. Some guys threw some fish oil in the water and put some severed tuna heads on a rope. (They do not actually feed the sharks at all, because they do not want to condition them to approach humans. Good call.) Then we waited. And waited. And waited. I started feeling sick, even though I had taken some motion sickness medicine. Susan started feeling sick, even though she had taken motion sickness medicine. Suliman fell asleep.

And then the first shark came. Followed shortly by another. And another. They were just cruisin’ around, being sharks. We put on wetsuits, and five people got into the cage. I was one of them. My mask would not stay on my face, so I had to hold it there. You will notice if you go to the shark diving website, which has pictures on it, I have been cropped out of the picture of people in the cage, probably due to the fact that I looked real dumb holding my mask onto my face. I should explain the mask: it was not a snorkel mask or anything - the cage was attached to the boat, so you just bobbed there in the water with your head above the surface, and then when a shark came, someone would yell "SHARK ON YOUR LEFT (or right, or whatever)!!!!!!!" And then you would put your head under and swim down and stay for as long as you could hold your breath. Or until your mask filled with water, if it wouldn’t stay on your face. It was really cool. They came SO close. And you know what? Even though they’re really big and have a lot of teeth, they’re actually not that scary looking. When they’re just swimming around not eating things, they’re actually kind of cute. Maybe a little majestic. I’m still not sold on "beautiful." But then when they attacked the bait and the fake seal, they were not as cute. After they got the sharks to do about six passes, we swapped out and new people got in the cage.

I should add here that I had my wetsuit on inside out. Score another retard point for me.

It was also around this time, when I got out of the cage, that I started getting really seasick.

But I didn’t barf.

When it came time for second rounds of cage diving, I was feeling really cold and nauseous. So I decided to sit this one out and go with the next group.

I will regret this for the rest of my life.

At first I was happy with my choice, because the sharks seemed to have lost interest in the boat and the bait and the weird people staring at them. So I was like haha, look at all you losers partially-submerged in the freezing sea surrounded by chum waiting for sharks that aren’t coming back.

I should add here that when I was in the cage I accidentally swallowed a giant mouthful of chum water.

Now if I could post a picture on Blogger McDumbturd, you would all be able to see the cage. And you would see that just inside the cage, above the "viewing window", is a long black float. This is what keeps the cage buoyed up. We were warned at the beginning NOT TO PUT OUR HANDS ON THE BLACK FLOATS, because every once in a while, a shark will try to "explore" the floats. But we’d been diving for a couple of hours, and I guess people were kind of "forgetting" this warning, because suddenly there were hands and arms draped all over these black floats. And then the marine biologist named Alison saw this, and yelled "GUYS GET YOUR HANDS OFF THE BLACK FLOATS!"

And so the divers took their hands off the black floats. Good thing, because just then, out of nowhere, this shark swims up to the cage, pops its head out of the water, and starts BITING the black float, right in front of the face of the girl who was in what should have been MY spot in the cage. I wish I could explain this better. The shark’s TEETH were INSIDE the cage, right in front of her FACE. Even from the boat, it looked terrifying. But I, like everyone else who was safe on the boat, was laughing and saying "Awesome."

I don’t think the girl thought it was that "awesome." Because when the shark finally swam away and she came up again, we heard her yelling "GET ME OUT OF HERE. GET ME THE HELL OUT OF HERE RIGHT NOW!! "

So they got her the hell out of the cage.

She was okay. She was laughing a lot and saying "Holy shit" over and over again. I think she was considerably shaken, though.

AND IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN ME.

As much as I wish it could have been, I in my infinite honesty will admit that it’s probably a good thing it wasn’t. I couldn’t even put my wetsuit on right. I was the only one who couldn’t figure out how to anchor myself in the cage. My head probably would have floated right into the shark’s jaws. Or I would have seen those teeth right in front of me and tried to scream and swallowed water and died. Seriously, it’s kind of scary to imagine.

But it wasn’t me and I’m over it. Sort of. I went down with the next group, hoping that the fiesty shark would come back to bite the cage some more, but he didn’t. One shark did come right up to my corner of the cage, and I made eye contact with her small scary eye.

We saw six great whites total, four females and two males. They were all over two meters long. Missed opportunities, ineptitude and seasickness aside, it was a really, really cool experience. Truly. I have a newfound respect for the majestic great white shark.

Also, we got a DVD of our trip, and every time Susan and I appear in it, I look completely confused, as though I have just woken up after being drugged and kidnapped and thrown on a shark diving boat, and am trying to figure out how I got there, and Susan looks incredibly pissed off. Every time Suliman is shown, he is wearing his awesome sunglasses, looking really cool, waving at the camera with a huge smile on his face. Susan and I never even knew when the camera was on us. When we disembark at the end of the trip, Susan has her face stuffed with some kind of food and is chewing angrily, and I am clutching a bundle of sweaters in my arms and looking completely disoriented, and we are the only two people to get off the boat without waving at the cameraman.

I have no idea how a video could possibly make me look less fun than this one did.

But I promise. I had a good time.

The fun all happened inside.

Okay, since the intial publication of this entry, Blogger has capitualted and decided to let me publish picutres. So here are some pictures to help you visualize. the first one is the picture I was cut out of because I was clutching my mask to my face. The second is one where you can really see the cage. See the black floaty thing? That's what Shark #4 bit. It's teeth were so sharp that you couldn't even see bite marks in the float afterwards. The third picture is (I think) Shark #3. He had more white on him than the rest, if I recall. Then there is the group photo in front of the Shark Fever, and some picutres of Susan and me showing that we are actually capable of looking happy.

P.S. - If anyone is interested I also added a picture of the "Red Twins" from Ulysses. Tell me we don't look like convincing made-up fictional characters.

At Last

At long last, the time has come.

I went to South Africa with one goal. I pretended to have a few others, so that I would be allowed to come here to study abroad, but actually, I only had one:

To go cage diving with great white sharks.

And that's exactly what's going to happen tomorrow.

Unless it rains.

I am so excited. I love sharks.

And by love them I mean I think that they are absolutely terrifying and have recurring nightmares about them eating me.

You know how people are always talking about having a "respectful fear" of wild animals? That's like how I feel about sharks, except that my fear isn't really respectful. It's just straight up fear.

Because have you LOOKED at them? If you think about land predators, like lions and bears and wolves, you can sort of imagine them possessing a certain capacity for compassion and mercy - because even if they eat you, at least they're cute. You think of The Lion King or White Fang or Grizzly Man, and you don't feel quite so terrified. Simba wouldn't eat me, you say.

Sharks, on the other hand, look as if nothing would give them greater pleasure than rending your body in two. Not only would they eat you, they would enjoy it. They look as though they are just hoping that when they chomp down on you, one of your friends grabs you and tries to pull you out of their jaws, so that they can engage in a game of tug of war with your mangled body and WIN.

You know how there are all these movies about little kids befriending wild animals: bears, tigers, wolves, black stallions, seals, orcas, dolphins, and I think there was even one about a manta ray? You ever wonder why no one makes one about a little kid who befriends a great white shark? Because a great white shark would eat the child. Immediately. A great white shark does not care if you are an adorable eight year old girl whose foster parents are cold and indifferent, or a twenty year old surfer, or a seventy year old man trying to stay in shape by swimming laps in the ocean - all a great white shark wants to do is eat flesh.

But I do love sharks. In theory.

Most of the time my fear of sharks is a "moot point", as they say, since I am always on land, and they are always in the ocean. The only way this fear could every really become valid would be if I were to say, take a boat out to the middle of the ocean where all the sharks live, actively bait the sharks, then descend into the water in a cage that, let's face it, appears to be made out of Linkin' Logs.

I got the idea for going cage diving while watching Shark Week on the Discovery Channel last summer, and they made that guy who hosts Dirtiest Jobs go to South Africa and cage dive. And I said, "I'm going to do that." Let it never be said that I am not a woman of action. I learned a lot from Shark Week, such as that the liver of an adult hammerhead shark weighs forty pounds, and that once in the 1920s a great white shark got into a river in New Jersey and started eating children, and they reenacted this event in sepia tones with all these kids in pre-depression costume splashing in the river intercut with shadowy shots of something moving under the water and this narrator who was not British but always pronounced the word "again" "agayn". The people on shark week were always calling great whites things like "majestic" and "beautiful". I'm sorry, I love and respect them and everything, but they are not majestic. Or beautiful. They have about thirty rows of teeth and in pictures there's always little bits of flesh clinging to the teeth, and bloodstains around the gums and they look like they swam into an anvil. And they have small, scary eyes. I probably shouldn't be saying this, lest they find out I've been talking smack about them through some kind of echo-location/ESP thing.

I don't think the shark diving guides are going to like me much. They're going to be telling us things like, "The majestic great white can swim for years without stopping to rest..." and I'm just going to be like, "Have you ever seen a shark decapitate anybody?" Because the fact is, that even if people love and respect sharks, the reason they go cage diving - at least this kind of cage diving, which requires no diving experience whatsoever - is because it sounds like a really cool dangerous thing to do.

I want to make it clear again that I love and respect sharks.

And I think it would be kind of cool tomorrow if one of them semi-aggressively bumped the cage. But did not actually attack. Also, there seems to be some discrepancy among my friends as to whether urine repels or attracts sharks. At one point I did think that this was something I should clear up before going, but the thing is that if a great white shark gets within ten feet of me, the odds of me not wetting myself are next to nothing. There's just nothing I can do about that. Also I'm kind of nervous because you're not supposed to hold the cage at any time - because a shark could eat your hand - but what if I forget and involuntarily try to stabilize myself? And a shark eats my hand? And then a whole bunch of other sharks come because of the blood and they break the cage open and I shove Susan in front of me and use the few seconds it takes them to devour her to get the people on the boat to pull me to safety by my bleeding stump. And then I have to deal with survivor's guilt?

Really I shouldn't even speculate on all this, since what's probably going to happen is that we're going to float around in the boat for eight hours and not see a single shark - or worse, we'll see a fin off in the distance and the shark diving people will be like, "Score! We don't have to give them their money back." and then they'll put us down in the cage for a few minutes and the water will be too murky to see anything and then they'll take us back to land.

Let's just hope that whatever happens tomorrow involves aggressive bumping and possibly a harpoon gun.

Ulysses...Come on!

Last night Susan and I attended a theme party held by Lesbigay - the organization we signed up for at the beginning of the semester, thinking, Oh, gay and lesbian groups are always looking for straight allies to help them fight for their rights. We forgot that in South Africa they already have their rights. Still, we thought it would be a fun group to join. As it turns out, they're not the friendliest bunch of people I've ever met. Or maybe they're just wary of Susan and me because we're straight and we ate a large portion of the free pizza at the opening function. Anyway, we have only befriended one Lesbigay member throughout the entire semester. So we figured, hey, it's time to get our 80 rand's worth and go to this party and make some friends.

The theme of the party was to dress as your favorite fictional character. Susan and I were really excited about this. Until we realized that we don't actually have any clothes that would help us to look like our favorite fictional characters. Also we did not know who our favorite fictional characters were. I thought about dressing up like Hester Prynne, but I did not have a puritan-length skirt. Or a scarlet A.

Then Susan and I came up with a great idea. We each had a red dress. And black shoes. We would pick a book that nobody in the world has ever actually read - such as Ulysses, by James Joyce - and say that we were characters from that book. And then when people were like, "What?" we'd be like, "You know...from Ulysses...the Red Twins...with the crazy hair and the...Ulysses! Come on!" Like you'd have to be real stupid not to know what we were talking about.

So after Afrikaans, Susan and I went into the bathroom of the arts building, changed into our red dresses and black shoes, drew asps on our faces and clavicles, made our hair look weird, and headed off to the Mystic Boer.

We paid the 10 rand entrance fee, then stood there in the midst of lots of people - male and female - dressed in underwear and fishnets. We felt very awkward. And anxious. I do not do well in groups of more than five people. Especially if I don't know them. I do not like making new friends. Really, going to the party was probably not a good idea at all. But we really wanted the chance to say "Ulysses...come on!" to someone. So we went up to a girl dressed as Heidi and her friend who was dressed as...whatever Heidi's boyfriend's name is. Heidi asked us who we were supposed to be.

"Oh, we're the Red Twins. From Ulysses," we said.

"Cool," said Heidi.

Clearly someone hasn't read Ulysses. And doesn't want to admit it.

So we moved on. I wanted to go home. But Susan said we had to stay until we'd made at least three new friends. So we had excruciatingly awkward conversations with Holly Golightly, the Playboy Bunny, and a caveman named Johann.

But we still hadn't had a chance to say "Ulysses...come on!" to anybody.

Then, a man came up to us, dressed in normal black clothes.

"Are you people?" he asked us.
"What?" we replied.
"Are you with the people?"
"Are we with...what people?" we asked.

This went on for approximately ten minutes, before the man finally said:

"Do you like guys or girls?"

"Ohhhhhh. Guys."

"Okay. I just wondered. It's so hard to tell sometimes."

"So who are you dressed as?" Susan asked.

"Fictional Character," said the man.

"Any particular one?" Susan asked.

"Fictional Character," replied the man.

"Cool," we said.

"And who are you?"

"We're the Red Twins. From Ulysses."

"From what?"

I could tell this was going to be our window of opportunity. "Ulysses. By James Joyce. We're the Red Twins..."

He wasn't saying anything. I knew it was now or never. "Ulysses," I said. "Come on!"

And I realized that, if you say something like that to someone you don't know, it doesn't sound like you're pal-ing around - it just sounds rude. Like you think the person's really stupid for not sharing your pretended wealth of literary knowledge. This guy did not walk away from us. He slid. Like, "Okay, I'm just gonna sliiide over here and..." He was gone.

So Susan and I went home.

I think it was one of those ideas that just sounded better in theory than in practice. Like communism.