Send Him My Love
By
Vincent Gray
Copyright ©2016 Vincent Gray
This book is a work of fiction. All the characters developed in this novel are fictional creations of the writer’s imagination and are not modelled on any real persons. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead is entirely coincidental.
ISBN: 9781370776665
I apologize. I have taken over your seat in order to get some stuff out of my cabin bag, I will be finished in a minute.
No problem take you time, there is no hurry.
There, I am finished. Let me just zip up the bag.
Do you want me to put your bag in the cabin bag compartment?
Thanks that will be great.
Let me introduce myself, I am Virginia Penrose, I don’t really see any point in being an anonymous stranger, we will be sitting next to each other for the next 12 hours or however long it is going to take us to get to Paris.
I agree with you, pleased to meet you, I am Robert Mackenzie. Are you going to Paris on business or holiday?
A bit of both I suppose. I am a fashion model and I am going to do some work in Paris.
Excuse me for not recognizing you. So you are the real Virginia Penrose, your name did strike me as familiar.
Yes unfortunately I am the real Virginia Penrose, this is me ‘un-photoshopped’.
I wouldn’t have expected to find someone like you in economy class.
It could not be helped. I had no choice. It was the only seat I could get on this flight and I have to be in Paris tomorrow morning. The trip is totally unplanned. I was asked only yesterday by my agent if I was available and I said yes as I needed the money, believe it or not.
And you, are you on business or pleasure?
Like you it is a bit of both, a bit of business and a bit of pleasure.
So what do you do?
I like to see myself as writer, a novelist, writing fiction has become my passion.
You are the first novelist I have ever met.
And you are the first fashion model that I have ever met in the flesh.
Fashion modelling is only my day job. I have other ambitions. I actually want to be an actress. However, I am still at the wannabe stage. For the time being I am working as a fashion model in order to make a living, but my dream is to become an actress, and eventually a movie star I suppose, and I think that I can live with that possibility, I am not a very modest person. I am probably a bit of a narcissist but hopefully not a destructive or pathological one.
If you are reflectively or mindfully aware of your own narcissistic predilections then I don’t believe that you are a significant danger to others. But speaking about having a dream, it is also true that without having a dream we will never amount to anything, I really believe this. Anyway I am also only a budding writer and I am trying to live my dream. I only started writing about four years ago.
Actually I am a very self-reflective person, I analyse myself all the time, as you said, I try to be self-consciously aware or mindful of who I am, what I am and also what I want. I suppose it is my dream that I want, this is also what motivates me to work at getting where I want be in life.
Well then I think you are well a balanced person and there is no need for me to be overly careful of you.
You have a good sense of humour. I see we are going to get on just fine. Anyway let’s talk about you first. What were you doing before you started writing, if you don’t mind me asking?
I don’t mind. I was a professor of philosophy. However, I have not stopped being a philosopher and I have not stopped doing serious philosophy.
This is another first for me, you are the first professor I have ever met, and also the very first real professional philosopher that I have ever met in the flesh, so tonight it seems that both of us are having first time experiences. It seems a bit weird, but in a nice kind of way.
This is what makes life and especially traveling so interesting and I think this is the case for both of us, life should be lived as an adventure, if possible. As I was saying, I used to be a professor. However, I am now retired, but I have been granted the position of a professor emeritus, which allows me certain privileges like having an office on campus and having access to the library and the internet and so.
Have you published any of your novels?
Yes I have managed to write and publish eleven novels over the past four years.
Wow that is unbelievable!
Yes I have actually surprised myself.
How did you manage to think up eleven different stories?
To be honest I don’t know. Each novel started with a faint germ of an idea which eventually germinated and grew into something that I could not have imagined beforehand.
Have any of your novels become best sellers?
Not yet. One of my books has done fairly well.
And which novel is that?
Segomotso and the Dress Maker
Can’t say I have heard of it. What is it about?
The novel is an experiment in what I would call ‘Queer Fiction’ in the deepest and broadest sense of the very idea of Queer Fiction. I have been told it is a beautiful story. I am proud of what I have achieved in the writing of Segomotso and the Dress Maker. I would like to believe that it belongs to the canon of 'South African Queer Literature'. I don't think South African Queer literature has made its mark in South Africa or Africa or even in the rest of world for that matter.
I have never heard of Queer Fiction before. You don’t mind me asking you if you are gay.
No not at all. I am not gay. But that does not stop me as a writer from writing about characters who happen to be gay or choosing any other literary theme that happens to interest me and which I find worthwhile exploring. This is part of the adventure of being a writer, it is also what makes writing fiction an incurable addiction and also a lot of fun. Once you start working on a writing project for a novel it eventually becomes an all-consuming exercise. You can end up living, eating, sleeping and dreaming the story. While you are writing the rest the world stands still, it literary stops turning.
You seem to be disappointed that I am not gay?
No I am not. I am actually glad that you are not gay. You are a nice man. I think we may be kindred spirits.
A nice man? You think that at the age of 67 I can still be a nice man?
Well you are definitely not unattractive. You don’t look your age at all. You also have a sharp and exciting mind and I find that attractive in any man.
Well thank you. And I find you incredibly beautiful. How old are you if you don’t mind me asking?
I don’t mind. I am twenty two. Going back to your book, tell me more about the writing of Segomotso.
OK, let me start at the very beginning. The pre-history of Segomotso goes back to the 1970s. It is grounded in the turmoil of the experiences associated with that era in the political history of South Africa. South Africa was in a complete social and political mess during that time. Many of my own experiences from that time converged in the writing of Segomotso and the Dress Maker. For example, I was in the Angolan war and I was at university. I was a soldier and I was a student. So the combination of war, the military, and student life feature quite prominently in several of my first novels.
What actually inspired you to write the book? Where did your idea of Queer Fiction actually come from?
To be honest I don’t really know. Many things contributed to the inspiration of the actual narrative which eventually gave rise to Segomotso. I suppose the founding idea for Segomotso was ultimately inspired by a strange experience that I had in 1979 while I was a temporary lecturer at the University of Cape. I befriended a Coloured transvestite by pure accident. I was driving down De Wa
als drive late one night after seeing a movie by Luis Bunuel called ‘That Obscure Object of Desire’ at the Labia in Cape Town. It was about 11.30 pm. I saw a lone woman hitchhiking on the highway. I drove past her not intending to stop, but I stopped anyway about 100 meters away, that is only after I had second thoughts. After a bit of a wait, I opened the door and I saw that the hitchhiker was a Coloured woman. Anyway we began talking and she suddenly interrupted our conversation by stating that she was 'Queer'. I did not immediately grasp the meaning or significance of her strange confession. I immediately replied, shooting from the hip: It does not matter, we are all queer, and in fact everybody is queer in some way.
That is amazing, why did you say that?
I think the reason why I said that we are all queer in a manner of speaking was that between 1978 and 1979 it felt like that I was living a double life. My father had died in a car accident. I was going to Mass and reading the Bible, but I was also reading Jean Genet, Habermas, Hegel, Sartre, Camus, Adorner, Heidegger, Althusser, Gadamer, Foucault and Henry Miller. I was reading Henry Miller's Tropic of Capricorn and Tropic of Cancer, I read Henry Miller all the time. In fact Henry Miller’s writing was having the biggest impact on me. In 1978 my life had become a blur. My father had passed away as I said, and I was very close to my father. I found myself visiting the illegal multi-racial nightclubs in Fordsburg. After parties in Yeoville and Bellevue I found myself drinking in shebeens in Alexander Township with ‘on the run’ Soweto