The Homeless Diaries

Wolfgang Storm is a 38-year-old sports writer and former digital editor who has been on and off the streets for the last four years after burning his professional bridges. During those four years, Wolf, as he is better known among colleagues and peers, ekes out an unstable existence as a freelance writer, which often sees him languishing on the streets of Johannesburg for weeks at a time, living among hoodlums and addicts. On a cold and miserable evening in mid-July, a curious addict strikes up a conversation with Wolf, in which he tries to solve the mystery of what an apparently clean, articulate, and honest individual is doing on the streets of Johannesburg. Wolf, who has always been a loner, reluctantly entertains the conversation before doing some soul-searching of his own, reflecting on what many might actually deem a life well lived and trying to figure out why he finds himself in this current predicament. As Wolf gets lost in his thoughts, he zones in on his fraught relations with women, an aspect of his life that has troubled him more than any of the circumstances he currently faces on the streets. Narrating in the first person, Wolf takes readers on a retrospective journey of his life with women. A 21-year-old Wolf's journey starts in Cape Town, where he gives in to his urges and solicits the services of a street prostitute (who he only remembers as the Lady in the Red Shoes) for the first time, after weeks of agonizing about it. The moment is an instantly regrettable one, not least because Wolf does not feel he gets a meaningful return on his investment. In an attempt to put the whole encounter behind him, Wolf subsequently pursues more conventional courting methods but quickly discovers that dating is beyond him, partly because women don't find him that interesting but primarily because he does not possess the pluck required to pursue a woman. The chase is just too daunting for the ironically named Wolf. For professional reasons, Wolf returns to his hometown, where he becomes somewhat of a celebrity, working as a municipal reporter for the local newspaper, which in turn helps him land his first-ever girlfriend purely by accident. Stacy is a bisexual woman who works at the local municipality and has always been a fan of Wolf's municipal coverage. Being sexually liberated and adventurous, Stacy introduces Wolf to a world and life that he could never have imagined. However, the two lovebirds eventually drift apart, and Wolf jumps at the first opportunity to make a Cape Town return. In a bid to explore more of the city, Wolf unwittingly finds himself in a strip club for the first time, reigniting his curiosity about working women, whether they be on the streets or in licensed establishments like The Cage. While Wolf becomes a regular visitor at The Cage, he only expands on his curiosities when he attends a six-month training workshop in Johannesburg, where he makes a point of visiting numerous adult establishments in and around the city but only really settles on a place called the Honey Pot. Wolf develops a healthy relationship with two of the women who work the Honey Pot, such that he convinces himself he has actually fallen in love with one of them, Lisa. When Lisa nips his advances in the bud, Miranda becomes the rebound, and Wolf becomes her keeper. The training workshop eventually ends, and Wolf must return to Cape Town, where he sinks deeper into the city's dark underbelly and eventually settles on a well-hidden establishment called Majestique. Initially, Wolf develops an attachment with a dancer called Megan, building a relationship that expands beyond the walls of Majestique. Wolf ignores the limitations that come with this relationship, chief among them being that Megan is already spoken for, but Megan's fresh pregnancy saves him from becoming the villain in this arrangement. Due to her pregnancy, Megan is to leave the job, while a disillusioned Wolf decides to explore what else the working women of Cape Town have to offer. After investigating a string of strip clubs and brothels in Cape Town, Wolf decides that he was probably better off at the more affordable Majestique, where the rules were loose and women more sporting. When Wolf returns to Majestique, he is a bit relieved to learn that Megan has not returned and strikes up a similar relationship with Sky, who is also Megan's main rival. The change in dynamics causes massive friction when Megan does eventually return, culminating in Megan outing Sky's association with Cape Town's most violent gang. Like clockwork, a series of gang-related incidents, including a veiled threat by Sky's hitman fiancé, prompts Wolf to walk away from it all, deciding that he should never have ventured down this dark alley in the first place. Shortly after walking away, Wolf is hospitalized by an acute case of pancreatitis and put in an induced coma, where the ghosts of Sky and Megan haunt him in a series of highly imaginative but vivid hallucinations. The whole time it never occurs to him that none of this is real. In one of those hallucinations, Wolf imagines that Sky has been killed by her fiancé for her infidelity, while Wolf is hunted down for his part in the sinful act. While on the run, Wolf is aided by elements of the gang scene in Cape Town, who have their own agendas and personal scores to settle. One of those elements is gang matriarch Fatima, who also develops an attachment to Wolf. All of it feels real and is thus incredibly traumatic for Wolf, even after he awakens from his coma. If he was ever uncertain about his relations with strippers and prostitutes before, the coma experience helps settle the debate for him indefinitely. Wolf leaves this life and bumps into a potential soulmate in Amorette Bekker purely by accident, but their memorable romance is doomed by race and class dynamics. Amorette is a white South African woman of Afrikaans extraction, while Wolf is a black South African man of Zulu extraction. Finally, Wolf stumbles into a fraught relationship with a friend of a friend called Nandi, who, like Wolf, is Zulu. On the face of it, everything about this feels right and frankly overdue, but Wolf's attempts to win her over prove futile and prompt several lapses in judgment that ultimately see him out of a job and on the streets. Instead of evolving into something positive, Wolf's bias against black women turns into deep resentment, which lingers with him during a period of considerable adversity while slumming it on the streets. However, that does not wound him nearly as deeply as all the coloured and white women, with whom he shares some of his most pleasant memories, who don't even bat so much as an eyelid during his darkest hour. There is an loneliness about Wolf's homeless existence that eats away at the soul.

Updated on Jul 10, 2024
Created on Jul 10, 2024 by Mchunuriser