Brad looked like ‘Brad’ sounds.
Big, bullish, bad-ass Brad.
There he is now, coming off the rugby field, his tight, white PT shorts riding up between his thighs, knock-kneed and brutish, his head like a block on the shelf of his shoulders.
He is a bear of a man stuck at school because he failed a grade twice, which sucks for him, but is gold for the first team’s front row.
And we, Brad and me, we’re friends.
One year at Christmas, he braves the Schimke front gate where everyone knows not to enter when the German is home from work, to bring me a gift. It’s a bottle of perfume.
Maybe how I feel about Brad is not how Brad feels about me.
Once, only once, he’d invited me to his house, where he lived with his mother, stepfather and stepbrother. He hinted that his stepfather was an asshole. He hinted that his stepfather hated him. Maybe he outright said those things, although Brad was taciturn, so I think it was hinting.
I knew how long I could be there before the parents arrived home. The stepbrother – was he a snitch? – wasn’t there. We were safe.
And there we are, Brad and me, sitting in a jacuzzi. Of all things. A jacuzzi in Queenswood was as unlikely as a garden gnome in a Beverly Hills garden. The jacuzzi stood on the driveway behind where the cars parked under the lean-to.
Nothing bad happened. I had my school swimmer on. He was in his PT shorts. We drank Oros under the flowering wisteria.
Brad never crossed any boundaries. He never touched me. Until I stood in our living room, by the old anthracite heater where the advent wreath hung each year, with a bottle of perfume in my hand, I’d had no idea he might like-like me.
Brad was towering over me shyly, my mother was smoking a cigarette on the couch shooting me knowing looks, my brother was lying on his stomach with his chin in his hand watching TV.
Brad like-likes me, I thought. I didn’t know what to do.
After my New Year’s shift at the restaurant that year, Brad fetched me and we drove around the benighted streets of the sad capital of the Republic of South Africa. Just drove and drove. Up to the Union Buildings, down the steep road on the other side of the koppie it stood on. We watched the lights, the warm December air coming in through the windows, silence between us. There were parties, but we didn’t go to them.
Brad and I had a secret.
There was a place in Pretoria, near the station, a hole in the wall, a bar, with a basement. It was a gay bar, but ‘gay’ was banned, so no one said that out loud and things were kept reasonably ho-hum in case the police barged in. In the basement though, was a tiny stage. I saw my first drag shows there. In the audience, men kissed men and women kissed women. It was about as illegal as a thing could be in South Africa if you didn’t count being black.
I used to go there often with my out-of-school friends. It wasn’t something I spoke about at school.
And Brad, big, ‘bad’ Brad – Mr Scrum Prop – he was the bouncer there.
We never discussed that we couldn’t discuss where we spent weekend nights, and we never discussed our weekends with one another, but whenever I went there, there he would be, near the door, letting in one under-age girl (me) and getting kissed on the cheek by the motley regulars.
In the January after the perfume gift, Brad went to the army. He wrote to me, though he hated writing. I wrote to him. He was sent to the border. He didn’t like the army. He didn’t want to be there. He had no say in the matter.
Big, ‘dumb’ men are put to use in big, dumb projects like scrums and wars.
In spring, I sent him a letter with a sprig of jasmine to remind him of home.
There were never declarations of love. Between us, there was only a sweet something that was nothing. With Brad, I felt safe. I knew in the deepest part of me, that even though everyone at school stepped lightly around him because he was quiet and big and serious and ‘old’, that Brad was a good, good man.
Brad came back from the border. What was cracked before was broken now.
I went to university. He worked at Checkers.
Life went on.
We lost touch.
Years later, a friend told me Brad was dead.
I think sadness took him.
‘I’m talking about my own life. Which not only can’t matter to you – it might bore you. So: get your own gig. Make your litany, as I have just done. Keep your tally. Mind your dead, and your living, and you can bore me.
Rachel Kushner, ‘The Hard Crowd’
Alphabetti
When we were staying in Pringle Bay last year, after we’d vacated the flat and before we went on our adventure, Sam and I walked down to the beach every day. I started to spot letters in the wild. I took photographs with the intention of completing the alphabet but I only ever found four. Then I forgot about the project.
Would you like to help me finish it?
Keep your eyes open and take pix of the letters you find in your own wild. Send them to me. Let’s see if we can go A to Z before the end of the year.
A few things
Hello all the new readers!
If you don’t know what you’re in for, neither do I. Not a single Love Letter writing day arrives with me knowing what will come out. The world is jam-packed with little things, the material just sitting there, hiding in front of my face, and sometimes I’m lucky enough to notice it.
It (the material and the Love Letter) doesn’t promise to be coherent. It (the material and the Love Letter) just promises to be there whenever you want to pause and notice it.
If you’re curious about some of the things that have emerged in the past, here’s a list of recent top hits on Love Letter:
Love Letter will always be free. It’s not connected to any product, and the platform I chose for it is free of advertising.
I started paid subscriptions a while ago in the hope that I would be able to pay myself for the time I take writing Love Letter every week. If you feel what I do here matters, consider upgrading to a paid subscription. There will always be small thank yous and little surprise extras for doing so, but mostly you’d be doing it because you like what I write.
Oh, and I often write back when you write to me. Almost always. Mostly. Sometimes I don’t and then it’s not because I didn’t enjoy your letters or comments or didn’t read them. It’s just because, you know, things get busy and life-y.
Lots of love,
K.
Wow. wow. Wow. wow. Absolutely loved this piece of writing. Such a precious homage to this quiet, good person. LOVED. thank you