The closest I have come to experiencing a perfect romantic relationship was when I was 12. I had just started high school. Let's call her Precious. Her skin was the flawless colour of chocolate, she had big, round, grey eyes and beautiful, pouty lips.
We would meet at sunset around Brother Hansfried's farm and take lazy walks along the banks of the Klipfontein Dam. And then we would kiss and make sweet, passionate love under the moonlight.
Ours was a near-perfect romance, to rival Cleopatra and Mark Anthony, Romeo and Juliet, or even Julius and Floyd. The reason it was only nearly perfect is because of one fundamental flaw: it was all a figment of my fertile imagination. I made up the entire thing to impress my friends back home in Hammarsdale.
And I suspect that their tales of great romantic prowess from their own schools were also figments of their respective imaginations.
I did it for survival. You see, in my neighbourhood there was one fate worse than being called a thief, a cheat or a liar. And that was being called isishimane. That is the Zulu name for a man who lacks the verbal skills to charm females.
Yes, the term applies specifically to a man who cannot organise the separation of a female from her sexual restraint - you know, because romance is something men seek and women give up reluctantly.Even as a snot-faced five-year-old, I was already under immense pressure to prove that I was not isishimane. Oh, how I wish I was making this up. You'd be minding your own business playing in the yard when an older boy would say, "Bongiwe likes you. Go over there and plant a kiss on her cheek or you are an isishimane." Oh, hell no! Not isishimane! And then it would on like Donkey Kong.
Living in the 2017 version of South Africa often feels a lot like being a passenger in a derailed passenger train careering down the track at 260km/h with a deranged, giggly driver at the wheel. The giggly driver may or may not have even invoked the avoidance of being isishimane as a defence in one of his many legal wrangles.
A lot is being said in our public discourse about toxic masculinity. It is a very real phenomenon. I have absolutely no doubt in my mind that concepts such as isishimane have an immense influence in perpetuating the toxicity that seems to accompany the male species.
Listening to one of our indigenous language radio stations a while back, I was fascinated by the passionate backlash from both male and female callers around the subject of catcalling. It is rude for a red-blooded African male to not compliment a beautiful woman, it was argued.
A female who started her point by asking every woman to "Get real and be honest" concurred, adding that it feels odd to walk all the way from Park Station to Bree Street taxi rank without at least one man "complimenting" your outfit.I have witnessed this "complimenting" many times. While waiting for my bunny chow on Durban's Umbilo Road, a group of men whistled at a woman with a full bottom but flat chest with the refrain, "Ayinamabele yinyoka yini?" (You, without breasts like a snake). She looked like she had been punched in the solar plexus and the wind taken out of her.
I'm raising three boys. The soon-to-be-13 is at that age where he's going to socials and meeting girls. I hope that between the Boss of Me, the first-born and myself, we're imparting the appropriate values.
My generation has got it all wrong and I'm no angel in this regard, judging by the ribbing that is meted out to my single mates when they fail to "get that number" from prospective wives. Presumably because all single females are looking for a husband.
During a friend's recent nuptials in Soweto, another mate who teetered at the prospect of chatting up an attractive woman was crucified for "suffering from chronic tongue cramps".
We really need to do better.
• Follow the author of this article, Ndumiso Ngcobo, on Twitter: @NdumisoNgcobo..