Not long after the euphoria of my birthday, I was thrust back into reality. Wrote the Geography 1 paper on the Wednesday, and it was pretty cool. HA! And they said it was gonna be hard.
South Africa
Part 73
Based on emails from September, 2002.
I was missing the surf a bit. The local had been fucked up lately and I didn't have time to hike around. Hmmm, maybe a sparring session with Wingnut would ease the boredom and keep my mind awake. Nope. When I tried to get hold of the grommet his mom told me that he was on a week's detention for fighting in school.
So I phone him at home ask asked him what was up.
"Jason and me got into an argument about my girlfriend. I was trying to convince Jason that all the stories about her weren't true."
"How do you know they're not true? Where there's smoke there's fire, bro."
"Cos I know, that's how. Anyway, Jason said something about her being an open legged slut so I planted him, and the two of us ended up in a rumble that even the teachers were battling to pull apart. I'm tellin' ya, Steve, if they hadn't pulled me away from him I woulda nailed him fucking good."
"So what? You guys total enemies now after having been such good buds?"
"No way. We're still buds. But he knows now not to talk shit about Jacky or I'm gonna sort him out. No shit, we were out surfing together yesterday arvie. I think Jason's just aggro cos I spend a lotta time with her."
"Surfing? You took your boards out in that muck?"
"It was more about us getting together to show that we're still buds."
"Hey, Winger," I said, changing the subject, "thanks again for the card... and that CD rocks, bro. Where'd you get the money?"
"Working around. Selling my body to the old ladies in the 'hood. I woulda asked you to do that but they're not into old guys."
"You are so fucking bad. So what? You doing gardens and shit?"
"Anything that'll give me some bucks. All the people Cody used to work for. Got me doing some hectic stuff, though. Drilling holes and fixing electric plugs. I even hadta hang a small window for an old biddy."
"Hope you had your clothes on."
"Yeah," he giggled, "even my shirt. It's too cold!"
"Anyway, I just wanted to find out if you wanted to come around here to hit the bag for a bit. Sorry to hear about the detention."
"It's cool. I can handle it. I'm studying too, so maybe it's gonna have to wait 'til next week, or maybe the weekend, before we can hit out."
"Cool, man. Try to behave, huh?"
"Yeah, right! So what fun is that? Hehehehe."
After the convo with Wingnut, I phoned Steph, and we spoke for quite a while about school and all sorts. It was a pretty laid back, enjoyable chat.
Eventually, the grommet arrived at my house one afternoon cos the surf was shit, so we gymmed a bit. Then we sparred, and were hitting the crud out of each other. That little fuck could hit hard. When I went to put on my headgrear, he insisted that he didn't need to. Yeah, right. That was until I rounded him against his ear. Then he quickly changed his mind. We'd been working out while wearing only shorts, so it was a bit distracting. :)
"Hey, Gary, as I write this, it's a stunning day and I'm waiting for a call from Wingnut to go surfing. Gary, I've been fucking boring and it's all your fault. Steph had plans for last night. Bruce had plans for last night. And the Winger was out with his buds. I did absolutely fuckall. I was really hoping that I could stay over at Bruce's place so that the two of us could get it on. He got me so damn worked up the other night at the party. Anyway, I think this hero shit is fucking boring."
Well, that was a fucking waste of time. That kinda stuff went straight over Gary's head. He never paid any attention to my grumblings or complaints. Hahahaha. But my ordeal wasn't over yet. I woke up at 2 that morning in fucking agony with cramps. It felt like every muscle in my body was cramping up, and the pain was unfuckingbelievable.
On the pos side, I had a date on Sunday night to be at the Ts for dinner, and I was really looking forward to it. Meantime, my non-existent social life meant that I'd had a chance to reply to all the guys who'd written birthday emails to me. I got about eight mails. Pretty fucking hardcore.
"So that's the catchup, Gary. I'll writeya again in the week."
Peace, Love, Respect
Steve
Got a really cool email from June. That lady rox. She's got a pic of a tanned blonde hunk on her desk and she's gonna think of me whenever she sees it. Hahahahaha! Hmmm. She didn't tell me whether or not the hunk was naked. Anyway, she also mentioned Mark's birthday. I asked Gary if he remembered the date. According to June it was about October 17 but I had it written down as October 8. He was gonna be 20 this year. Cody was only about 3 months older.
I also explained to Gary that I wasn't sure what caused the muscle cramps, except that they came from nowhere. I'd be sleeping, and suddenly my stomach would start going into a knot. Then I'd experience the most unbelievable pain as my stomach muscles cramped up before my whole fucking body went into overspin with cramps.
On a lighter note, I managed to get into the surf for a short while. Not all that great, but a coupla nice rides. Also saw the page on gazzasheroes about Sian Whitmore. Actually, I got to talking to Mr T about that on Sunday night cos I went around there for dinner. He said that he remembered one of the old 'barges' that he rode being a Whitmore brand. It took three of them as kids to carry the thing to the beach cos it was so heavy and big. But he says they were all little guys back then. He didn't remember teens being as big as the guys were nowadays.
Wingnut didn't join us for dinner cos he was studying at home, and he was totally peed off from what Mr T told me. But he said that Wingnut's folks were right, and that the grommet had to get his priorities sorted.
Mark phoned Cody's folks a lot to find out how things were going. I hadn't realized that. Mark also kept them informed about everything that was happening at his end.
It was a good supper, and a good evening. I coulda stayed there with Cody's folks all night listening to them telling stories about their magic son.
Mr T introduced Cody to "his" mountain when he was four years old. They would sit together overlooking the sea while Mr T told his son blood-curdling pirate stories.
It was about two years after that that Cody got his first ride on a wave cos Mr T surfed regularly, and wanted to spend quality time with his son. So he got around it by teaching him to surf.
"Mrs T can't have any more kids, Gary. How's that for a bust? They wanted to have more kids after Cody was born but she couldn't have any more. Mr T says Cody broke the mould before he came into the world. Hahahahaha! Had me in fucking hysterics cos we imagined Cody smashing that Cody mould to smitherines.
I asked if they woulda had more kids now and Mr T said no. Why? First off, Mr T didn't want to be an old man at his kid's 21st birthday. He wanted to be able to surf and hike and camp with him. It wouldn't be fair on the lightie if his old man couldn't hang with him at least until he had his own circle of friends.
Then we got onto the subject of drugs, and Mr T spoke about it in front of his wife. I went fucking red with embarrassment cos I didn't wanna speak about it in front of her. But Mr T made it kinda easy to just talk, so I told him about me and Steph going to counselling as well as dating.
"Do you think it's cool, Mr T?"
"I think it rocks that you and Steph are going out together. We love Steph like she was our own daughter."
"The reason she never mentioned it to you is cos she feels that maybe she's betraying Cody."
"Betraying Cody? That's ridiculous! Cody would wholeheartedly approve of you two going out together, I'm sure. At first Steph was going out with Mark, then with Cody, and now with you. Makes sense to me. Keeps it in the family."
Gary also wrote a bunch of stuff saying that he thought it was good that Steph and me were together. He said that if ever we got married somewhere down the track, our kids would be like grandkids to Mr and Mrs T. Maybe not quite the same, but pretty close.
Shit, I couldn't remember everything we spoke about, but it was late when I left Cody's house.
Monday was an off day for studying for me. Same as the day I wrote this. I was writing a science paper tomorrow, and had a shitload of studying to do.
"I saw Wingnut yesterday afternoon, Gary. He came around to do some sparring, and we gymmed for about an hour, lifting weights and punching the crap out of each other in the ring."
"Then, unexpectedly, I got an idea of the grommet's pain threshold. He got his hand caught in the weight cable of the pec machine, and it was being crushed in between the cable and the roller. The little dude never fucking flinched. He calmly pulled the cable down to relax the tension, and released his hand."
"He had a helluva cut on his hand, which I cleaned. Even then he didn't hassle about any pain or discomfort. It it had been anyone else, they would have been screaming!"
"Anyway, he phoned me last night to say that his dad took him to the doctor to take a look at his hand. Nothing broken.
"I told them that it was cool."
"Wasn't that fucking sore?"
"Yeah."
"I would've screamed!"
"Cos you're old."
"Not so old to beat you up, you little runt."
"At least I'm a handful, huh?"
I just couldn't help laughing my tits off at his wisecrack. And then, "Yeah, so when do I get a handful again?"
"Can't talk now. I dug that 'tho. Just so you know."
"Cool, bud. Hey, maybe there's gonna be surf this weekend."
"Hope so. Maybe you can get your buds to drive us to the other side [of Cape Town]."
"I'll check. Loveya, bud."
"Yeah, cool. Seeya."
In some ways, the Motor Mouth story that Gary was writing reminded me of Wingnut, and I told him so. "Winger's a lot like him. I wish I was more like Spencer. He's got his shit together. You need to write more about him. Tell him to let you know ALL the details. :) OK, back to the books. Cya, Gary."
Peace, Love, Respect
Your friend and the Codeman's
SteveCopyright © 2002 All rights reserved. mrbstories
