Sarah Buitendach: Man, what a hard topic

I am always a tad nervous when Wanted’s annual men-themed issue rolls around. Not being one, you see, is a stumbling block. I cannot write from experience — and that, we are taught, is always the best way to approach the strange, self-indulgent craft I call a job. Equally, this topic seems to flirt with a dangerous array of pitfalls — or, should I say, potholes. Navigating the worlds of gender, power, toxic masculinity, gender-based violence, homophobia, and the like is akin to taking a trip down Jan Smuts Avenue at 9pm, just as loadshedding stage 6 and a thunderstorm collide. There is only one word for it, and that is “fraught”.

This is not 1965 or an episode of Mad Men, and I cannot get by with extolling the virtues of suave men, or clever men, or successful men. Even if I am a woman. And, speaking of suave men — matters of male style are ones that I am infinitely ill-equipped to comment on. Plus, the gent who edits this magazine has that covered in an exceptional fashion. Also, I just caught myself googling the new platform sandals by dubious shoe brand Crocs. So really, enough said.

Meditating over a glowing, blank page on my laptop did not help. Crowd-sourcing suggestions from kind friends got me nowhere — or to conversations not printable in Wanted. The desperate contemplation that I should write about the surprising merits of mafia men (to be fair, I was rewatching The Godfather at the time) went down like Luca Brasi when I ran it by my sister. It’s an idea best left sleeping with the fishes, she said. Writing about men in books I have recently read! For a nanosecond it seemed a picturesque narrative road to meander down. Then, I considered that the last title I’d devoured was Ted Botha’s truly excellent new book on Joburg’s most famous serial murderess, Daisy de Melker: Hiding Among Killers in the City of Gold.

You probably know the drill, but over several years in the 1920s and 1930s, Mrs De Melker (formally Mrs Cowle and Mrs Sproat) finished off two husbands with strychnine, and then put paid to her own son with a spot of arsenic.I could imagine the three unfortunate chaps lying alongside each other (and executed Daisy) in the city’s Brixton cemetery, grumbling and groaning. “Leave us alone,” they’d moan, “ours isn’t the story on which to end an elegant edition of Wanted.”

That concept went down like a grain of poison in your morning coffee. Badly. Then I considered writing about the merits of younger men. I realised I don’t know any, so what could I say? That they’re all drinking that palate-ruining hydration drink, Prime? “No, no — that’s school kids,” screeched my sister once more. “You sound creepy — don’t go there.”

The mental pendulum swung to the other end of the spectrum — older men. The obvious topic seemed the new (old) King of England. But what hasn’t the world’s press said about the 74-year-old? “His Maj”, those sausage fingers, and progressive notions on nature hardly seemed a hook to keep you enthralled. The most I could muster is that he’s practically an infant when compared to world leaders such as Cameroon’s Paul Biya (90) and Pope Francis (86).

Not an amazing trend, by anyone’s standards. I thought about men I have loved, and men I have despised, I thought about men who have left me cold and men I have admired. I cogitated that dating apps will make you believe that the ones to be loved or admired no longer exist — and that this column was sounding increasingly like a bad attempt to mimic the ancient poet Rumi, and I must stop it immediately. 612 words and I still had nothing… except to say (with apologies to Dutch philosopher Desiderius Erasmus for mangling his famous quote): “Men, can’t live with them, can’t live without them, and can’t write about them either.”

• From the June edition of Wanted, 2023.