Intimate Quarters

PrologueQuarters. Measures. Give and take. These stories are about the place of the private in a time when the doors of confinement blew open. The chapters have two sources. First, an archive of documented cases on s****l behavioral patterns in South African society commissioned by a research facility in 1992–3 and supplemented again in 1998. Added were new studies done in 2012 and 2014. During the initial and second projects I was a data gatherer. For the last two, a coordinator and compiler. All the information was gathered via questionnaire, written testimony or recorded interviews. The names are fictional in accordance with privacy rules. Later on, my background as researcher prompted me to tap into a second source. I placed an advert in two daily newspapers in 2004 asking for real-life erotic accounts, shying away from the very obvious topics. I decided to compile a book. My preference was for the experimental and the unexpected and accounts about negotiating situations. I further liked accounts that contained a slight fabulous edge. With the passing of time some now almost feel like period pieces to me. Maybe they are tiny love stories. A love can stretch over time or be limited to an instant. Everything happens through the eye of the beholder and the underlying thread is my own story. But let me not get ahead of things now. Part 1