The Model from Senegal

By Vincent Gray

Basking in the Mediterranean sun, visiting art museums in Italy, and walking the streets of Paris a young student from Africa embarks on a journey of love and erotic adventure.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Vincent Gray
• Release date: Aug 12, 2017
• ISBN: 9781370408474

Vincent Gray

As a son of a miner, I was born in Johannesburg, South Africa. I grew up in the East Rand mining town of Boksburg. I matriculated from Boksburg High School. After high school, I was conscripted into the South African Defence Force for compulsory national military service when I was 17 years old. After my military service, I went to the University of the Witwatersrand. After graduating with a BSc honours degree I worked for a short period for the Department of Agriculture in Potchefstroom as an agronomist. As an obligatory member of the South African Citizen Miltary Force, I was called up to do 3-month camps on the 'Border' which was the theatre of the so-called counter-insurgency 'Bush War'. In between postgraduate university studies I also worked as a wage clerk on the South African Railways and as a travelling chemical sales rep. In my career as an academic, I was a molecular biologist at the University of the Witwatersrand, where I lectured courses in microbiology, molecular biology, biotechnology and evolutionary biology. On the research side, I was involved in genomics, and plant and microbial biotechnology. I also conducted research into the genomics of strange and weird animals known as entomopathogenic nematodes. I retired in 2019, however, I am currently an honorary professor at the University of the Witwaterand and I also work as a research writing consultant for the University of Johannesburg.

Book preview

The Model from Senegal

A very short story

A Novel lifted from the Farewell to Innocence Omnibus

By

Vincent Gray

Copyright © 2017 Vincent Gray

Smashwords 2017 Edition

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: 9781370408474

Author Biography

As a son of a miner, the author was born in Johannesburg, South Africa. He grew up in the East Rand mining town of Boksburg during the 1960s and matriculated from Boksburg High School. After high school, he was conscripted into the South African Defence Force (SADF) for compulsory national military service at the age of seventeen. On completion of his military service, he studied courses in Zoology, Botany and Microbiology at the University of the Witwatersrand. After graduating with a BSc honours degree he worked for a short period for the Department of Agriculture in Potchefstroom as an agronomist. Following the initial conscription into military service in the SADF, like all other white South African males of his generation, he was then drafted into one of the many South African Citizen Military Regiments. During the 1970s he was called up as a citizen-soldier to do three-month military camps on the 'Border' which was the operational theatre of the so-called counter-insurgency 'Bush War' during the Apartheid years. Before and in between university studies he also worked as a wage clerk on the South African Railways and as a travelling chemical sales representative. The author is now a retired professor whose career as an academic in the Biological Sciences has spanned a period of thirty-three years mainly at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa. Before retirement, he lectured and carried out research in the field of molecular biology with a special interest in the molecular basis of evolution. He continues to pursue his interest in evolutionary biology. Other interests which the author pursues includes radical theology, philosophy, and literature.

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1

The story of my life is the story of the restless heart that Saint Augustine writes about in his Confessions. I have a queer woman’s heart beating in my breast and it is desire and passion that makes it restless. The heart is the wellspring of desire and passion. At Vilanculos I felt the same kind of excitement being churned up by the restlessness of my heart. Now at Jan Smuts International Airport, a full hour before our flight to Madrid, I felt the awakening of my restless heart. To kill time before boarding we wondered about in the international departure lounge. I struggled to contain my excitement. This was the first time that I would be embarking on an aeroplane flight. I have become breathless with erotic desire and passion, I suddenly want Kate to make love to me in the women’s toilets.

I feel as hot as hell with pure physical lust. I am in a state. I am completely wet between my legs. I want to experience an orgasm. I am overcome with feelings of sensuality. Like Kate, I am a sensual person. Kate literally oozes sensuality. Now I am feeling so hot that I am panting like an animal on heat. I want Kate to fuck me; I want her to bring me to a climax. I am a wanton woman. I feel like whispering my fantasy in her ear: ‘I want you to fuck me in the public toilets.’ I know she would comply with my pressing and urgent need. Instead, I follow her into the Central News Agency; she says that she wants to buy a book or two to read on the flight and on our holiday. She is oblivious of the state that I am in. I gaze distractedly at the shelf stacked with classical fiction. The title ‘A Thief’s Journal’ catches my eye. I flip through pages. I am surprised, I am stunned, and I am amazed. What is this book doing in a bookshop in South Africa, how did it escape the surveillance of the censors? The book by Jean Genet is dedicated to Jean-Paul Sartre and Sartre has composed a foreword to the novel. I decided that I will buy the book. I scan the other titles, thinking that maybe there is a book written by Sartre. I know about Sartre, his name has been dropped in conversations that I have inadvertently eavesdropped on while quietly drinking coffee in the student union’s cafeteria, from its high perch on the ridge it overlooked the lush leafy northern suburbs of Johannesburg. Now suddenly the name SARTRE jumps out among the titles. It belongs to the novel called ‘Nausea’. I decide to purchase the two paperback books. At the cashier, Kate looks at my two books. She has never heard of the authors. She pays for her two murder mysteries. I find pulp fiction boring. I make a pretence of interest while remaining silent about my personal opinion regarding her literary tastes.

2

The boundary between the human and the animal is artificial. It can be breached. Language and textualization cannot fix the boundary between the human and the animal. There is something that it is like to be a particular living creature. Every living creature has its own peculiar kind of unique experience of the world in which it finds itself. Living creatures have conscious states; they each have their own kind of awareness, their own kind of mental states. Insentient matter. How did consciousness arise from insentient matter? It is a fact that life arose from inanimate and insentient matter. The elemental constituents of matter possess all the powers, predispositions, properties and relations by virtue of which life and sentience could emerge.

3

Humans are fallible. So we are all indeed capable of sin. It was in our nature to be sinners. Kate as a practicing Catholic was also fallible, as I soon discovered. She suffered from all the human foibles. Her greatest character flaw was her vanity. My parents thought I was going on an overseas tour with fellow students. Instead, I was going on a secret honeymoon holiday with a woman in her late twenties with whom I was having a clandestine