Bouncy boobs and plaster in the pubes

I was a kid in the Seventies. My parents were born into the Silent Generation, but they found their voice and were young and cheerful in the days of the Baby Boomers.

The Seventies were also known as the Me decade. The white hippies of the Sixties settled down in little boxes and had four children. But their minds were still set on satisfaction: books such as The Joy of Sex lined the bookshelves and women were encouraged to find themselves sexually. Ob la di, ob la da, life was fun, ja? They watched Carry On movies at the drive-in while we kids hid under a blanket because the movie had an age restriction. We did not understand English yet, but saw enough from underneath the blanket to suspect that sex was a jolly, giggly, bouncy affair.

My parents resembled Des and Dawn Lindberg: He friendly with a beard and arty waistcoats, she actually wearing the pants, a vivacious stick of dynamite with long black hair and batik skirts. They played guitar and mandolin and sang folk songs, and sometimes a hit from The Beatles or the Bee Gees. They hosted parties where everyone gradually unravelled. The child I used to be suffered from insomnia and would watch the partygoers from the staircase until early morning.

Children were to be seen and not heard. Hanging around in adult company was a serious transgression and you would be told “bye-bye" with the flick of a limp wrist. Off with you. But after a few glasses of Lieberstein or Paarl Perlé, they didn't seem to mind so much. When the grown-ups noticed you, they would sometimes sing: Een twee drie, wie se kinders is dit dié — dit traak julle nie, julle maak hulle nie.

My father was a sculptor and painter. The female body was his favourite subject, although, to keep a roof over our heads, he immortalised all the old National Party statesmen in bronze, marble and ironwood for government buildings — statues that now gather dust in warehouses or on the hills of Orania or in the lobbies of the Voortrekker Monument.

Sculptors are allowed to have nude models. Nudes always graced our home, sometimes life-sized, to the shock and condemnation of my schoolmates. My father was a lecturer and the models were often his students, always female. They were like children in the home. My mother didn't stoop to showing jealousy and my sister was not bothered. My brothers peeked through the window. I was the one who hated the nude models. They doted on my father and fussed over him like daughters. I watched wrathfully, the dethroned eldest daughter.

The beautiful models would always patronise me: “Darling, you're starting to grow boobies. Don't walk hunched over, show your stuff, you're beautiful!" I was embarrassed and furious. My mother, with the capacity for manipulation that was second nature to women of her generation, would use my resentment against me: “If you don't like the models coming to stay here, you have to model for Daddy." A child had no voice in our house. Absolute obedience was required.

So, I posed, ashamed of my developing body and uncomfortable in my femininity. It was a serious affair. You were not allowed to move, for hours on end, and the pose was usually unnatural and uncomfortable, like an arm that reached skywards. You posed until you lost all sensation in every limb and then you posed some more. I often caught a cold and fell ill: The studio was draughty, and standing butt naked in front of a two-bar heater in winter with goosebumps on your bottom is no joke.

I was an athlete in high school, lanky and slender. I remember my dad made a plaster cast of my leg one day. When he wanted to remove the negative, it wouldn't come loose because plaster was stuck in my pubes. My mother didn't hesitate to trim my bush to the skin with a giant pair of scissors that was part of the toolset, black and rusty. In that moment of anger and humiliation, I thought to myself: Maybe I'll write about this one day.

I posed for my father and he was always polite and appropriate, if one could behave appropriately in such an exceptional situation, but sometimes, in the pool, I saw him hungrily eyeing the models.

I think there was more sex around in the Seventies, before Aids appeared on the scene. And there was the firm belief that one deserved a satisfying sex life. It was all Greek to me, who postponed my puberty until further notice after something happened to me when I was four.

Just the other day, my mother told me about herself: “I used to be quite a saucy little filly." I don't want to know what that means. I didn't start thinking about all of this until much later, wondering if I'd found the models beautiful and if this was part of my discomfort.

In college, I posed naked for art students. No one could keep as still as I could. Later, when I was young and fancied myself an artist, I painted all my girlfriends in the nude, gay and straight. They were always very kind and accommodating. And maybe, just maybe, there's something about the intense, impersonal gaze of the artist that causes you to focus, that strips you down to your essence. It allows you to find a silence within yourself. You leave your body behind and become pure consciousness.

Years later, when I lived with Jeanne Goosen and we both freelanced, there was no food in the house one day. I headed out the door and came back in the late afternoon with salad, pizza, flowers and wine. Where did you get money? she wanted to know. I'd sold a coffee table book, translated a paper, and posed for art students.

A weird youth equips you with mad skills. Nothing is ever wasted; everything comes in handy at some stage.

But it took me a very long time to discover that sex can be a jolly, giggly, bouncy affair.

♦ VWB ♦

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