My encounter with the attractive motorcycle cop left me unsettled in ways I hadn’t expected.
It was far more than a confrontation with authority as the other cops were irrelevant to me emotionally. He stirred so many new feelings in me. At 15 this is not expected, not while most of us are still fantasising about our dream girls. I remembered his shiny black boots, the well-fitting blue uniform with the silver star on his heart, his reflective sunglasses and the two-toned open face helmet. Only later did I realise he recognised me as the boy who delivered his milk tarts, but he looked quite different in his smart uniform. He was always friendly and appreciative when I delivered his freshly baked milk tart, and I never minded cycling the extra distance to him as he lived the furthest from me. Out of uniform, in jeans and a T-shirt, he looked years younger and I never saw a wife and kids. This marked the beginning of questioning assumptions I had accepted without thought.
Adolescence is often remembered for parties, first romances and rebellion. Mine was shaped by something rather different: philosophy, classical music and an unlikely friendship. Anticipation and the feeling that my isolated life was about to change were overwhelming. Questioning authority gave me a sense of freedom I never had before. Even books came under scrutiny. Knowledge requires discretion, but books rarely teach restraint. Diplomacy, boldness and intuition make a great trio in this tango. Hiding in libraries taught me reading but not how to navigate the insecurities of my peers. Motorcycles and petrolheads taught me more about people in a year than I learned in seven years in libraries. They freed me from my cage, broadened my horizons and shared adrenaline addiction. I connected to them, but we all face being a square peg in a round hole at some point.
Not feeling that you belong is a common experience of adolescence. The Internet makes it easier to find people to talk to. Before the 1990s connecting with like-minded people was almost impossible. Opening up and talking freely to peers still requires caution, if you are wired differently. And in some way or another, most of us are.
Piano stirred my soul as I was exposed to its vibration from infancy. Classical music was special to me, but few teenagers like it. Shortly after my employment at Film Fun, a 35mm movie rental shop that changed my life, I crossed paths with Louis who was also 15 and loved classical music. Besides being the most good-looking boy in school, he towered over most teachers and pupils at 1.85 metres in height. He was a brilliant pupil, and everybody took him seriously even at that young age. Michelangelo would have admired his Olympian physique. Surprisingly, Louis was not arrogant or pretentious as he was just raised too well. Humility was the norm in their home, where his father no longer lived after his divorce. He lived with his mother in a house in Humewood, an affluent suburb with magnificent sea views, following his parents’ divorce. My mother and I shared an apartment in Central. Escaping the dreariness of my place was marvellous when I was not working at Film Fun. Usually, it was just the two of us, accompanied by Pinky, his delightfully fat English bulldog who was as much a part of our philosophical conversations as the classical music playing in the background. Her quiet presence apart from her silent farts became the source of much bantering of oddly normal teenage boys. She added hilarious humour to our conversations ranging from motorcycles to the aesthetics of design and made us laugh a lot. Most boys our age were discovering parties, courting girls, modifying motorcycles or testing the limits of authority in the ordinary rituals of teenage rebellion.
Louis and I inhabited a different world entirely. We spent entire afternoons enjoying music while appreciating our silence during my introduction to the wonderful world of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, Mozart’s 40th symphony, Tchaikovsky’s 1st Piano concerto and more. Composers reveal their hidden emotions to us when we understand the intensity of their feelings that they express. Music became our special, silently shared experience. Words get in the way of magnificence.
Relishing in our passion for intellectual and musical curiosity, it was ecstatic to feel the shackles of isolation, orthodox brainwashing and mediocrity crumble. The Wall was my first non-classical LP, which I bought because I identified with its theme of isolation. It was the polar opposite yet shared the isolationism theme with Chopin’s Fantaisie- Impromptu in C-sharp minor, that is so beautifully romantic compared to the despair of The Wall. Fantaisie-Impromptu expressed my feelings in sound. Looking back, I realise how unusual our friendship was. We weren’t trying to impress one another with what we knew. We were simply driven by an insatiable curiosity. Every answer generated another question, and every conversation opened a new doorway into something neither of us fully figured out.
Our shared belief that almost everything worth doing could be done well united us. We were discussing topics far beyond our years and music became a very powerful bond as Louis had an encyclopaedic knowledge. We continued exploring music whilst enjoying togetherness. I rarely met his father who was considered one of Port Elizabeth’s finest dentists. Both shared a connoisseur’s instinct for quality, whether in music, engineering, craftsmanship or ideas. They appreciated things not because they were fashionable, but because they were excellent. He seemed pleased that Louis found a friend who shared his appetite for curiosity. His older brother was already studying at Stellenbosch University, and the tranquil house became a peaceful refuge where our conversations could wander wherever curiosity led us.
We cautiously did our best to avoid sensitive areas like sexuality as it was too awkward to explore. Louis, being the sophisticated old soul that he was, sensed that we both would have been uncomfortable in this dangerous domain. Any other topic that we failed to solve was elevated to one of those unsolved riddles of existence. Naturally the topic about sexuality would have to materialise at some point and I feared facing potential alienation about “The love that dare not speak its name” which Oscar Wilde was asked to explain to a court in England. I need not have read Wilde to realise how much I had to lose. Such a rare intellectual, spiritual, musical and philosophical connection to someone, few people ever experience. Sexuality simply took a back seat to friendship. Hormonally driven teenagers, irrespective of their sex, love discussing love. Knowing Louis, he sensed my discomfort and diplomatically and politely steered around this volcanic iceberg.
Infatuation is almost impossible to hide. Louis enjoyed my company and intellectual duels tremendously, but our mutual attraction, was distinctly different, I think. As much as he loved astronomy and faraway galaxies, I guess he was no alien. Words were not required. Silence said it.
The beachfront was famous for its sunshine, beautiful people and the minor traffic accidents that followed when some drivers seemed more interested in admiring the scenery than watching the road. On one such day, I had one of those accidents when a distracted driver failed to see my red Suzuki 50 GT and partially drove over me. I lost consciousness under his car, but he managed to drag me out. Strangely no serious damage was done to me except for many scratches, some bleeding and deep blue bruises. The bike was a write-off though and I was stranded but paid out for the bike. Visiting Louis was almost impossible. Both of us wanted mobility and the freedom to explore, so naturally finding new wheels was top of the list. Plenty of enticing 50cc bikes were on the menu but there was a new contender in this league. Naturally its pricing made it unobtainable. Unquestionably this was the Rolls-Royce of its class. The water-cooled Zündapp KS 50 TT was not simply the fastest or most expensive 50cc motorcycle available; it embodied a philosophy of engineering without compromise. At the time, no other 50cc motorcycle sold in South Africa was water-cooled. Even today, such sophistication remains rare in machines of that size, highlighting just how far ahead of its time the Zündapp really was.
Louis was certainly interested in motorcycles, but he wasn’t a stereotypical teenage petrolhead. What fascinated him was engineering at its highest level. Zündapp, to us, occupied a class of its own and was a demonstration of what German engineers could achieve. At sixteen, we believed it wholeheartedly, and could not wait to proudly drive together out of the showroom of Goldfields motorcycles in Rink Street. Roger McCleary, who pioneered the Japanese motorcycle revolution in South Africa and is now ninety-one, still describes the Zündapp as an expression of engineering perfection. Having known him as my motoring mentor for many years, I find that deeply touching.
Louis could obtain such a stunner easier than I. My deposit helped though. We were a bit like twins at this point, and both felt if either of us chose the Zündapp, both would have to be on board. Intuitively we knew being the only owner, or one of very few, Zündapps in Port Elizabeth would have created too much envy. Zündapp launched in 1979 in South Africa at almost double what a Japanese 50cc motorcycle cost but stood apart by bringing Grand Prix-style engineering to a learner-class motorcycle. In 1955, the Zündapp 50cc had already broken many world records. The multiple class world champion Zündapp set standard few, if any, of its competitors could match. Louis’ dad just bought the newly launched Honda CX 500 with a driving shaft and water-cooled engine, so it was hard for him not to buy Louis the Zündapp. My insurance money and savings were insufficient, but my mother and eldest sister helped to finance my shortfall. Louis and I collected our shiny bronze coloured bikes with chromed fuel tanks on the same day and felt like conquerors driving down the beach front boulevard. What an incredible feeling. We enjoyed the thrill of the high revving engines and attracting so much attention with such astonishingly advanced 50cc motorcycles.
Suddenly the two eccentric boys were noticed, and other schoolboys were unashamedly envious. Unfortunately, my mother wanted to move back to our house far from Pearson high school. As two cash-strapped boys, we were unable to spend much time together, anymore and we simply had to deal with fate as it unfolded. I missed the bond we shared and had a hard time adjusting. Looking back, I don’t think the Zündapps changed our friendship. Life did. We simply never noticed it happening. One day we were debating Mozart, philosophy and engineering almost every afternoon; before long we were travelling different roads. Some friendships end with an argument. Ours simply dissolved into distance, leaving behind the music, the motorcycles and the memory of two curious boys who briefly believed almost every question had an answer.
This is an excerpt from the memoirs of Rubin van Niekerk, Editor of Gay Pages.
