Chapter 2
CHAPTER 2
Ash
“He did what?” Sarah asked while I waited at the red traffic light that I’d been caught behind for more than ten minutes. Going to the physiotherapist before work had now made me late, and being late in my line of work meant the entire day would probably fall down like a set of dominoes. I’d be playing catch - up until well past 5 p.m.
“He dropped me on my head,” I said, cranking up the AC . The heat was stifling today. Cape Town was in the grip of a heatwave—in fact, the whole of Southern Africa was.
“Okay . . .” She sounded thoughtful. “I’m trying to picture this, but you’re going to have to give me more details.”
“I was bent over the chair, he had his leg up on it, which I guess was acting as a counterweight. I’m not a physicist, but I think that’s how it works. The laws of motion, or whatever it’s called. Then he took his fucking leg off the chair to take his dick out of his pants, and bam!”
“Christ!”
“I know.”
“On your head?”
“On my head,” I repeated.
Sarah was silent for a while, and I took the opportunity to honk my horn at the woman in front of me who clearly didn’t understand the phrase “early morning rush” but instead was leisurely filming herself in the traffic. She was probably a wannabee influencer. There were so many around here that whenever you were out in public you were constantly dodging being in the background of someone’s shot.
“I don’t know what to say,” Sarah finally said, breaking the silence.
“Me neither.”
“The laws of motion are clearly against you. If you’re not being dropped on your head, you’re breaking your finger by being crushed under the gravitational pull of a hotel bed to the floor.”
“That thing was rickety from the start, and it wasn’t even vigorous sex! We hadn’t even technically started having sex.”
“He was a little larger than your usual dates,” Sarah offered.
“I guess that’s what you get from trying to have sex with a bodybuilder from the gym. I’ve had to cancel my membership.”
“Obviously,” Sarah replied.
“I’ve even been forced to change my grocery store, since it’s right next to the gym and he shops there. I’ve had to relearn the entire layout of a new store. Do you know how traumatic it is when you can’t find the cheese and you’re having a cheese emergency?”
“Sorry, Ash. I could try and say something comforting if you want me to?”
“You don’t have to say anything,” I replied, finally making it through the demonic red light. Because she didn’t. We’d had this exact conversation, or a variation thereof, so many times it was boring and quite frankly totally shitty. In fact, my sex life was the only shitty thing in my otherwise amazing life. Everything else in my life was great!
I had a job I absolutely loved and I was really good at it: I was the director of cinematography at one of the best production companies in South Africa, working with arguably the most talented director. I had a big circle of friends who had become like family to me, which I desperately needed after my family fell apart following my sister’s death twenty-three years ago.
Twenty-three years . . . It sounds like a long time. Sounds like everyone should have gotten over it by now, but it’s impossible to get over what was such a shocking, unexpected tragedy. I know I’m still not over it. It’s shaped me in so many ways.
I was financially stable. I owned my own top-floor apartment with an incredible view over Camps Bay in Cape Town, voted most beautiful city in the world. I’d just bought myself a new car, a zooty little red Mini Cooper Sport convertible, which I’d wanted ever since I’d seen an old photo of my mom from the sixties standing next to her Mini. She’d looked so happy in that photo, and I wanted to remember her like that, before it had all gone so wrong. I’d just adopted a rescue kitten, Petal, who I loved more than I ever thought was possible to love an animal. I had awesome neighbors with whom I’d become friends. I was attractive, healthy and had heard myself described as someone with a sparkling personality to boot. There was only one thing that was not going right for me, that had never gone right.
It had been just over thirteen years since the sex curse had been placed on me, and since then, despite a lot of effort and trying, I was yet to break it. I’ve slept with a variety of people too, in an attempt to put an end to it. Initially, I’d thought the curse might be confined to a specific type of person, so I’d ventured out of my comfort zone a few times. From creative artists with twirly moustaches, to beefy bodybuilders, my local barista, to an anesthetist named Sibu who looked like a younger Denzel Washington and had been so, so sexy and the chemistry had been so, so off the hook that I was sure he was going to be the one to finally break it. But when he’d cried during sex and then apologized to me and said he still wasn’t over his divorce, I realized the curse was still firmly in place. Perhaps even more so.
There had been a gorgeous Greek man named Stavros who’d tried to eat an olive out of my belly button as foreplay, an American who’d wanted me to call him Daddy, which I’d refused to do, and of course the many, many Datr fails. It sounds as if I have a sky-high body count, but that’s not actually true. My conversion rate from dating to sex was actually incredibly low. As with my latest chair crasher, Barbie movie man, and the bodybuilder, none of those dates had actually turned into sex. In fact, my sex curse was so bad that even before we’d attempted sex it was already horrific. My sex curse is so strong that the only orgasms I’ve ever had have been at the hands of a toy named Roger.
“I’m almost at work,” I said, turning left towards my office.
“I have to start drafting a long and very boring contract myself. I’m tempted to order up a margarita just to make it a little bit more exciting.”
“I could do with a margarita.” I put my indicator on for the parking lot.
“Shall we round up the gang and do dinner on Friday night?” she asked.
“Please. But you do the rounding—I’m going to have so much work to catch up on.”
“Perfect.”
“Okay, bye,” I said, finally pulling into the office parking lot.
“Byyyeeee,” Sarah replied, hanging up as I pulled up to the security boom and scanned my finger.
“Hi, Ed,” I said, waving over at the building security guard. The poor guy looked boiling in this heat and I made a note to bring him down a cold Coke at lunchtime.
“Hi, Leigh,” he replied, fanning himself. Leigh was my work name. When I’d had to register with the Cinematographers Association of South Africa, there was already an Ashley Smith, so I’d gone with Leigh. It was rather strange at first having different people call me by different names, but I was used to it now.