I looked at the door lady blankly. I imagine she was a hot girl when she was sixteen going on seventeen, if you’re into a certain type of pale-faced pretty. Sharp nose, see-through eyes, limp hair, jutting hip bones. Fast-forward about a decade and her skin looked like she had been smoking since she was ten, betraying all her secrets: that she’s moonlighting, working the door to pay for the car she can’t afford but bought to upstage her ex-boyfriend’s girlfriend; that she once did a line of cocaine off this very pavement, trying to impress some DJ from Berlin; that she hates her mid-level marketing job so she’s doing graveyard shifts to suck up to event organizers, hoping to rise up in the ranks far enough to finally quit her 9-5 and live her best life as a creative influencer. I heard some impatient shuffling behind me, and I ghosted. Invisible, I didn’t acknowledge the hag, gliding away back to my car. 

Driving home I kept thinking about the ugliness of what that woman had said and the even uglier impression she made on me as a result. She might be the kindest person on the planet for all I know and it’s not like she barred me from the party for being ugly, so why was I so upset? My mind had conjured the worst dark magic, making her look bad to dispel how bad she had made me feel. 

I sifted through my mental debris searching for something to make sense of this and settled on a tasty Barbara Smith titbit: There’s a difference between being opposed to the status quo because of your own identity and being consciously, actively, radically opposed because you understand how the system works.

As I pondered, I saw three Sakmanne, walking in the service lane of the M5 highway, clad in their custom hessian bags. I’ve never seen a female sackcloth Rasta, it’s mostly young men selling plant-based medicines around the CBD. I used to be afraid of them, but now that I know more about their ways, I am in awe. In this Youtube mini-documentary, one guy was talking about why he chooses to live on Table Mountain and was like: “The city is full of blood man, people do wrong things, me, I can’t see these things.”

In those few seconds, all I saw were dreadlocks streaming behind swinging arms. I couldn’t tell if they were male or female. It didn’t matter. They looked so purposeful, marching as if to war. Walking stridently, but somehow, happily. Min gespin about traffic or tourists. They looked so free and it was so sexy. I lifted my eyes to the mountain, saying a quick please-and-thank-you for them, my friends, and the things that make them so beautiful. Focusing on intent. Sharing fruit, the earth’s candy. Making an effort to be supportive. Trying new things. Questioning the status quo and feeling some type of way about injustice, even if not directly affected. Especially when not directly affected. I hoped that none of them would ever be turned away from anywhere, for whatever reason. More than that, that they would never turn others away. 

On that hot December night in Cape Town, I prayed to all the gods for all my friends in all the cities to feel the way my mother lives – free in her skin.