Duck Soap

Two men one table over are talking about a dog. She’s a dog who hasn’t returned the beady eyed one’s texts, the kind of hound who’ll hump a table if you had to hear him tell it and she’s just as mangy and as mean as the most menacing mongrel… but without the loyalty.

All that aside, the ‘b*tch’ can yell. I know this because she calls him halfway through a T-bone steak and he excuses himself with a “lemme just talk to this b*tch” after pressing the answer button so she can hear and be heard yelling something indecipherable.

I’m sure they’ll live happily ever after.

He has deep grooves of determination around the eyes and I imagine this trait extends to his relationships or at least to his need to get this b*tch to return his texts. The call is curt. He cuts it off when it’s barely begun and with a hiss of “b*tch!” that sprinkles spit on steak.

I’m eavesdropping and I can see Beady is starting to realise so I pretend to be tres busy sipping my tea and soon I’ve truly tuned out and into a train of thought that asks: “what’s a woman got to do to be called a woman? Not a girl, not a chick, not a b*tch or a thot. Just a woman?”

Though it’s the most neutral and beautiful term for a person sans penis, it’s a word I hardly ever hear a man use to describe a dame. If she’s hot, she’s a babe. If God took his time, she’s a 10. If she’s not interested, she’s a b*tch and if she’s in a skirt, she’s a thot.

A million objectifying and insulting names but never the one that reminds men that we are two letters from men. Two breasts, one chromosome, same species. It’s a dazzling detraction. One that reminds me of driving to Kalk Bay in the front seat of a convertible next to a man who was marveling until he called me a dog.

Until he equated me to an animal, a pet and a peeve and found himself home alone with poem called ‘Duck Soap’. Penned promptly and pleasantly and put sweetly in his pocket by yours marthly before we parted ways until this very day.

Him to a world in which women are dogs. Me to a world in which I listen to my mama.

watch your words my mama said

baking scones and pulling thread

for words grow fangs just like a fox

hard as stone and rough as rocks

letters strung with best intent

she said dusting with rosy scent

enter souls through apprehension

which bend and break their true intention

so mind your tongue, she cautioned twice

buttering bread and boiling rice

for every sentence even whispers

can be the cause of spirit blisters

what’s more she said of sticks and stones’

ability to break one’s bones

as the bitterest and barest beating

this threw me into great unease

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