It was the sheep’s heart that did it. There it was, cleaved apart, glistening red and slightly smelly, sitting in a box outside my front door.

The message was clear. I hadn’t just broken his heart but taken an axe to it.
Whenever I write about friends or lovers in this column I give them aliases to protect their identity, but now, all these years later I can’t even bear the idea of giving him a fake name as if naming him will cause him to reappear in my life. He is, and always will be, The Unmentionable One.
The heart was the last in a series of efforts to win me back or punish me. At first there had been flowers, his mother’s homemade cake, a painting and even an offering of money. Next came threats of suicide, pleas, begging and midnight visits.
I was 17, he was 32.
This is not a tale of love’s young dream cruelly wrenched asunder – instead it is more of a soap opera featuring a shy and naïve teenage girl who fell for the emotional blackmail of a manipulative older man.
The Unmentionable One was a struggling artist. Or at least that’s what he claimed – in the six months that I dated him, I never saw him paint, draw or sculpt. Instead he spent his days drinking tea and getting stoned.
I would meet him in the afternoons at a café to drink tea and talk art, music and books. Given our age difference, I thought this was just innocent chat. One afternoon he broke down in tears, told me he was in love with me and would die without me. No-one had ever claimed to be in love with me before, nor was I aware of having moved anyone to tears, let alone inspired a life-threatening emotion. It seemed terribly romantic and so I agreed to be his girlfriend.
My parents, of course, did not approve. But, then, they didn’t know the half of it. They suspected, correctly, that he was pressuring me into sex.
At first he tried claims of sexual prowess that would both astound and delight me. This included a fantastical tale of a visit to a sex worker while he was in the army, who not only didn’t charge him, but invited him to come back for a freebie any time. I may have been naïve, but not quite that gullible especially since he manhandled my body in ways I found more of a turn-off than a turn-on.
My first, and only other, boyfriend had been as sexually inexperienced as me, but our fumblings had been a process of mutual discovery. Being intimate with The Unmentionable One was more akin to a duty than a pleasure, something that had to be put up with instead of enjoyed. For this reason I was sure that I didn’t want The Unmentionable One to be the first man I slept with.
When this didn’t work he tried begging and not particular subtle innuendo that he would be forced to get his satisfaction elsewhere should I not put out.
“I am a man, I won’t put up with this nonsense forever,” he would tell me darkly.
I should have countered that a grown man had no business messing around with a teenage girl. Instead I nodded as if I understood and asked him to be patient just a little longer.
On one occasion he tried to force himself on me, pulling my jeans off despite my protestations. My mother came home at the right moment, thus saving me from what would have been date rape. He was going to court the next day, and we both knew he was likely to get a custodial sentence. If he had to go to jail, he said, I really ought to give him something to sweeten the ordeal.
That was the other thing about The Unmentionable One. Art doesn’t pay, especially if you don’t do much of it, so he supplemented his income selling grass and LSD to teenagers. He got caught, but only with a small amount of marijuana, and was sent to jail for three months. I told my parents he had gone to work in Johannesburg, because they certainly wouldn’t have approved of me visiting my boyfriend at Pretoria’s notorious Central Prison – in minimum security, sure, but still home to some of the country’s most notorious murderers, child molesters and rapists.
After my second visit to the prison I was beginning to think that my parents, decrepit and hopelessly old fashioned though they may have been, had a point about this man. I wondered how I, a convent girl, who had kissed a total of three boys, been drunk twice and never touched a joint in my life had found myself with a drug-dealing con of a boyfriend and had ended up on the narcotic police’s watch list being tailed by enthusiastic cops at least twice a week.
After he was released I decided to end it. After all, you cannot in good conscience break up with someone in jail. Well, maybe you can, but I couldn’t.
I said we could still be friends; he thought we should run away together. I said I wasn’t ready for a sexual relationship; he promised to wait. I told him my parents had banned me from dating him; he suggested murdering my father – or me.
I am not sure how serious this threat was, but he pulled out a flick knife and showed me how sharp it was. It scared me enough that I agreed to keep seeing him. As far as he knew he wasn’t welcome in my home and I avoided going to his – I didn’t want to be alone with him.
I finished school, turned 18 and wised up. I told my parents everything, including the threats. This time I broke up with him over the phone, too terrified to do it in person, with a friend holding my hand for moral support. To get away from him I moved in with my married sister, who had moved city, for a few months. But as soon as I came home, he reappeared.
“You don’t know how big a mistake you’re making,” he told me. “No-one will ever love you the way I do.”
I really hoped he was right.
After this I decided I never wanted another boyfriend again. I would live and die a virgin. As it turns out, that damn pesky libido got me in the end, but for a long time afterwards I had a genuine fear of relationships, love or anything that seemed like commitment.
I sometimes wonder how my sex life would have turned out if I had slept with The Unmentionable One, whether willingly or not. If my mother hadn’t arrived home when she did, would I associate sex with pain instead of pleasure? I imagine I would.
This is a part of my life that I don’t like to think about and I found it very difficult to write this column. But I think there might be a lesson here for Hot Press’ younger readers. If you are male or female, gay or straight, don’t let anyone pressure or coerce you into sex before you are ready. In the end you’ll be happy you didn’t as you’ll have a more positive attitude to sex and feel better able to negotiate what you want and need from subsequent partners.
Sometimes saying yes is the right answer; sometimes no is the wisest course.
As it turned out, my first lover was and is a wonderful person who is still a close friend. Maybe not everyone can be that lucky, but you deserve a first sexual experience that leaves you with good memories and that brings a smile to your face, even many years later...