I’m still lurking around this elite hotel, trying to cobble together the logistics for my escape back to Sweden — Every night I climb to the rooftop, Chesterfield in hand, smoke curling around my skull like a halo of despair. From up here Cape Town looks peaceful. From up here everything looks like a lie.
And then she appears. The prostitute. She was a shadow I’d brushed past days earlier while staggering through Cape Town like a barefoot animal with my shredded Vibrams, soles flapping against the pavement, drifting from waterfront to nightclub to nothing. She had found me then, grabbed me by the arm with the force of a erotic hurricane, yanking me toward a nightclub that smelled of danger, perfume, and liquor-soaked dreams. I wasn’t ready. I wasn’t on the level. But they wanted me there. They wanted something I couldn’t identify.
The main girl — the one with the giant, hypnotic eyes — spoke in a voice that sizzled through my skull like a low-frequency bassline: “I like you. I called you over. Who are you? Why aren’t you wearing any shoes? I just want you in my life. I saw you yesterday. I saw you yesterday.”
Hierarchy. Power. Predation as charm. Deadly Call girls at the top. Everything else beneath. And here I was, a barefoot ghost, drifting through a flowchart machinery of sexual trafficking. I had no money, no armor, no defense — yet she was intent. Erotic. Magnetic.
Then a guard intervened, snapping the illusion. “Hey man, why aren’t you wearing shoes? You can’t be here.” Saved by bureaucracy. Delivered into the night for 58 hours. But now she’s back, and she had money, presence, and intent. She approaches me on the hotel ceiling, eyes burning like twin headlights. “Why did you leave that day? I’ve seen you here. Can I sit by you?”
I shrug, but I let her.
“Every time I see you, I just feel I want you in my life. There’s something about you.”
I laugh, because I’ve heard it all before.
“Well, a lot of people say that. I don’t know what it is either.”
She laughs in a very unsettling way..
“Do you enjoy sex?”
I hesitate. Obvious question..
“Well, everybody does,” I say.
“Everybody needs to release tension. They want a little massage.”
Before I can respond, she’s on me — hands on my shoulders, sliding over my chest, quite precise, but wild. Vibes crackling, raw and carnal, yet strangely calm. “What do you work with?” she asks.
“I’m a preacher,” I say.
“Oh — a man of God.
“Well, in my own way.”
“When are we going to have sex?”
Hesitation again, the universe squirming around this surrealistic, malevolent moment.
“Well, I guess I do — but I need to ask God first.”
Her energy doesn’t bend. She leans closer, a predatory sunbeam.
“God approves of sex. He thinks sex is good.”
“I still need to ask Him,” I insist.
“How long does that take?”
“Thirty seconds,” I say. I walk away, muttering cigarette prayers under my breath like incantations. My heart thuds like a jackhammer. The city swirls beneath me. I feel the weight of every decision I’ve ever made pressing into my spine.
I return. “Probably another time,” I say, the calmest voice I can manage.
I retreat to my room. My sanctuary. My battlefield. The Rubik’s Cube waits on the table, colors scrambled like a scream. Outside, Cape Town hums its low, predatory hymn. Inside, I twist the cube, click, click, click — praying the colors line up before something else does.
