Saturday, 25 July 09

14:51
So I'm remembering back to stuff that I said I was going to tell you.

And it was January 2003 and I was in my last week of living in Cape Town. I decided that weekend to have one last blow-out. Eating, boozing, clubbing etc.

I was still living with my parents at the time, their house a long way from the scene.

If I knew it was going to be a heavy weekend I would either sleep on a friend's couch, use a hotel nearby that had a hospitality arrangement with work or - disgusting but typical I know - go to the sauna and sleep in a cabin.

That weekend, thanks to the work arrangement, I was staying at the hotel in the Waterfront nearby.

So it was Saturday night and I was out at a club called 55.

It was an amazing place because as a club it was incredible and albeit gay, it used to attract a lot of "straight" guys. You know the ones, who you usually find in the loos at around 3am.

Anyway, it was at 55 that I met this guy called Sergio.

We did the usual thing, eyed each other, started kissing and bla bla. We decided to leave and headed back to the hotel I was staying at.

The first and last time I had scored while staying there. It was a double win because Sergio was so hot.

He was quite a bit shorter then I was, had dark hair and was around two years younger than me.

I remember he was very tanned and had on one of those Amercian Apparel-style V-neck T-shirts that cuts low, exposing a really good chest.

The night with Sergio was the best way to end my time in Cape Town.

It was so nice to wake up in this posh hotel with his hot guy and we talked and etc.

He said he was studying IT and worked at a coffee shop on Kloof Street.

I told him I was going to London that Tuesday and he said that was a pity I was going but we swapped numbers anyway.

He said he'd always wanted to see London so perhaps we would meet up again.

Anyway, at around midday-ish we decided to call it quits - he showered - and I said I would give him a lift back to his flat.

I did, we sat in the car outside, chatted and kissed some more. I remember thinking how nice it would be to simply just go back to the hotel with him and spend the rest of our lives in the room together.

We said a final good-bye, he got out and I drove home with a smile from ear to ear. What a brilliant last Saturday night and Sunday morning in Cape Town.

I remember thinking at the time; "that was the best send-off, now I'm ready to go to London...!"

That was Sunday 12 January. By the 14th, I was in London and less than a week later Sergio was dead.

He had been bound up, his throat slit, shot in the head and left to die in a pool of blood.

I remember getting an e-mail from a friend in Cape Town at the time; "have you seen this hectic shit?"

The story detailed a gruesome crime that had happened.

Sometime on January 20th, two men went into a house operating as a gay massage parlour and killed eights guys by tying them up, knifing them, slitting their throats, shooting them and then dousing them in petrol.

Of the photos of some of those who'd been killed, I instantly recognised Sergio.

He was known as Dean and he was actually a rent boy. The house I dropped him off at was the massage parlour.

To this day, I don't know how I feel about it all.

It wouldn't be fair for me to try and romanticise it any more than what it was. We met in a club, we left early and we spent 12 hours together.

It's upsetting I guess but then again it was a one-night stand.

He smiled a lot. We kissed a lot. He seemed happy and I remember we both agreed that we'd had a great time with each other, even though it was brief.

To remember that and then read the following - to this day, I still can't work out what emotion I feel...

From the Cape Argus:
"When 22-year-old Sergio de Castro was three, his mother left home. His father died four years later, leaving Sergio with only one close relative-his half-brother Dane, born of his father's second marriage.

Apparently, Sergio played musical chairs with relatives who didn't really want him until he finally went his own way, ending up in Cape Town in 2000. At the time of the killings, he was sharing a flat in Sea Point with a friend.

Sergio was quite talented, playing the flute and guitar, singing in a church choir, speaking Portuguese and learning Hebrew, but what he wanted to do, was web design. He had completed a course at a computer college, but was unable to find work, being told he was too inexperienced.

Sergio had worked at Sizzlers in the past, but had quit because he had had enough. Two months prior to the killings, he had gone back-out of financial desperation, his flatmate later discovered. Sergio owed the computer college R13,000 (approx. $US 2,2030), and his job at a coffee shop wasn't paying the bill.

All his friends denied that he had a drug problem, only a need to be loved. Sergio's cousin, Ricardo Afonfo, said this in the Cape Argus of January 19, 2004: 'One thing that really amazed me was how many friends he had that cared about him - they were really his family.'"