Page 116 of Death of the Author

Then he said, “You want some of this chicken?” They moved on with the day.

That night, she woke to a thunderstorm flashing and rumbling over the lake. Msizi was still snoring away beside her, sprawled out on his back. They always slept with the curtains wide open, since they were so high up facing Lake Michigan.

Zelu got into her chair and wheeled to the window to look outside. She wasn’t afraid of getting struck by lightning, though she assumed it was possible. It just didn’t bother her. The waters were gray and barely visible in the clouds and rain. A bolt ripped through the horizon like an electric-blue vein. A glorious interruption. Burning a break in the atmosphere. Unexpected, lethal, beautiful. For a split second, it danced in the air, mighty, magnificent, and free. Then it disappeared. She exhaled.

She watched every flash until the storm was done, letting them blaze their shapes into her memory. However, when she blinked, their features blurred behind her eyelids, and all she had to prove to herself that they’d been there were the crashes of thunder that came in their wake.

46

Interview

Msizi

Zelu and I are fluid, like water. That’s why we work. Mostly. I’ve grown and learned how to swim with the dolphin. But if it weren’t for my cousin iNdonsa, I’d have never been able to evenseeZelu. Before iNdonsa, I wasn’t very open, not to the world or to myself, really. And so I’d have looked past, over, around her. My God, what a thought, but it’s true. It took me years to get to where I am now.

My father is a lawyer, and my mother is a professor of engineering. I grew up in Durban, South Africa, hanging around UKZN, the University of KwaZulu-Natal. So I’ve always been around thinkers and builders. I didn’t read a lot of books, but I had a taste for Google and YouTube, studying whatever I developed an interest in. That’s how I learned how to hack and write software, develop apps, do all things digital.

I also loved fashion and was fascinated by how style could be manipulated to get certain results. I was always getting into arguments with my parents’ friends and colleagues about politics, racism, fashion, social media,the uses of artificial intelligence, the social and economic factors of the water shortages. I enjoyed people and didn’t mind spending a lot of my time with those who were older than me. It’s how I developed a sort of cold confidence, but also an arrogance. I thought I knew everything about how the world worked. It used to annoy the heck out of my parents. Probably because it was so obvious to them that I had much more to learn.

I eventually went to business school. Back then, I thought I’d end up working in the fashion industry. That may be how I developed a taste for models. Beautiful, “perfect” women. I preferred the black girls, though everyone seemed to prefer me.

I would date a girl for a few months, then move on to another. I enjoyed them. I treated them well, but I always got bored after a while. Most didn’t have many interests beyond looking good, being seen by others, and getting rich from modeling or acting. Women like that usually wanted to date men with money, which I did not have, but I was starting to build a software business and I knew how to talk about where I was heading in life. One of the things I’d started developing was a personal assistant that I called Yebo, which ran on a simple but powerful AI. None of the girls I dated wanted to hear me talk about how it worked. On the surface itwasboring stuff. And at the time, it was still only an idea.

I let the girls I dated influence me. As I said, I liked them. They were kind, sweet, and absolutely beautiful. I stayed fit; I dressed on point. Sometimes I wore brand names, though I didn’t need to. I didn’t have to flaunt wealth. Hell, I didn’thavewealth to flaunt. But I had confidence and I had dreams.

Ialwayshad a lady on my arm. Sometimes two. But I was always honest, clear, and straightforward. Then came the breakup with Spice. She was this super-tall, gorgeous fashion designer and model. Wherever she went, she stopped traffic, and she didn’t have to try at it. She loved money and felt she was entitled to it. Her role model was Jack Preston; she wanted to be filthy rich like him, just so she could fuck with the world.

“Whatever pops into my mind, I will make real,” she said. “Can youimagine the power? I’d destroy the Earth, just because I could. Then I’d build a spaceship so I could watch the destruction happen from above.” I’m supposed to be honest in this interview, right? Okay, I adored her hateful, nihilist attitude. I’d never seen a beautiful woman who was so vicious. I had it bad. She took so much energy from me—hating her, fucking her, fighting with her. We had a fraught relationship that somehow lasted two years.

But finally, I reached a point where I was just done. And when I told her so, she spat in my face and said it didn’t matter because she was moving to Europe anyway. She left, and that was that. The next night, I was in my apartment staring at the wall, wondering where Spice was at that very moment. My phone buzzed. It was my cousin iNdonsa. I was twenty years old, and iNdonsa was twenty-four. He told me to come outside right away.

When I came out, there was iNdonsa, but in a way I had never seen. The iNdonsa I had always known was a tall guy who loved fashion, like I did. Let me be clear, he proudly and loudly identified as a man. iNdonsa had first met Spice when she and I started dating, and they’d hit it off right away. Spice treated iNdonsa like her brother. He went to all her shows, even when I didn’t. Spice loved that.

iNdonsa is the Zulu name for what you call the planet Jupiter. When he was eight, he started going by this name instead of the one his parents gave him because he was his own giant, mysterious planet. The wordiNdonsacould also be said to mean “the one who draws the sun.” Perfect name.

That evening, iNdonsa stood there in my driveway not as a he, but as a she. It was not that iNdonsa was wearing heels or a tight dress or any other cliché of femininity. She was just wearing jeans, a T-shirt, and sneakers. But it was clear. I don’t know how long I stared at her. What was going through my head? Fear—“Does he want to try and fuck me?” Confusion—“I don’t understand what I’m seeing and why.” Violence—something deep in me wanted to punch him in the face until he stopped moving... I am stillinterrogating that feeling. Awe—“Is this even happening?” Fear again—“Someone will see and try to kill him.”

“I heard about Spice,” iNdonsa said. “We’re going out to dinner.”

“Uh...” I couldn’t stop staring.

“Shut up and just get dressed,” iNdonsa said in Zulu. “I know you weren’t doing anything else tonight.”

I got my jacket and we went, iNdonsa driving. I didn’t trust myself to drive. We talked about Spice, we talked about what my next business venture was, we talked about iNdonsa’s new job as an assistant to a local DJ. Everything but the obvious. And by the end of that evening, I felt better.

We went to a restaurant near the ocean. As we sat there, people glanced covertly at iNdonsa, did double takes, or just openly stared, but that was as far as it went, that night, at least. iNdonsa was a woman who loved women, specifically black women. And they loved her. I learned this eventually, as I met her girlfriends. One after the other. The fluidity of it all shocked me. Especially as a Zulu man. I watched iNdonsademandacceptance. She was charming, strong-willed, strong-minded, and she changed anyone who met her. Period. Even in South Africa, where people like her aren’t easily accepted.

iNdonsa is now one of the hottest DJs in Durban. She loves science fiction and reads voraciously. She was the one who explained to me why the genre is so important. How it’s about being different, seeing more, examining human nature, and imagining tomorrow. Her mere existence helped me evolve as a man, as a person. But the thing she did that I will never forget—the thing that opened me up to being with Zelu—was brief and subtle, yet huge at the same time. A month before I went to Trinidad and Tobago for my cousin’s wedding to Zelu’s sister, iNdonsa and I were walking to my car outside the university and she said, “You don’t know your type.”

I rolled my eyes. “I like girls. Let’s not have that conversation again. It’s a boring dead end.”

“Oh, I’m not disputing your sexuality.”

“Then what do you mean?”

She poked my shoulder. “Spice, for example, was the worst thing to ever happen to you, but you chose her for two years.”

I couldn’t disagree. The more distance I got from our breakup, the clearer this was. My relationship with Spice was the most toxic I’d ever had, and being with her had made me a much worse person.

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