Private Display Of Affection

Public display of affection (PDA) is a misnomer.

Private display of affection is the correct reference because of its origin, a space called home, or lovers’ grotto where two people relate in a certain way.

The public tends to witness it because at some stage, hunger pangs force them to visit the food mart or leave home to catch some theatre at the London’s West End, Off-Broadway in New York or The Market Theatre in Johannesburg.

What is mistakenly called PDA is the luxury of being adored, indoors.

We won’t say being loved because love is a leaking Hollywood water carrier buttressed by candlelit dinners, red roses, Valentine’s Day and a car for her birthday.  This is now a headache and financial burden in Africa as kids and lovers demand birthday parties and expensive gifts, an influence of local sitcoms, Nigerian and Hollywood movies.

Private display of affection is intense, painful, as two people follow each other around the four walls, chuckle, gaze into each other’s eyes and wonder how they found each other in a sea of billion people.  Sometimes they cry for no apparent reason.  They touch, to reassure themselves that it is real, they are together.   

There are no paper-thin declarations of I love you and me too, the standard Hollywood and Nollywood response.  It is a mute question and answer situation where the solution is the sense of touch.  That touching spills over into the public domain when they venture out of the house. 

It is a tonic for observers because they smile and whisper, he has it bad.  They are less subtle in Africa because onlookers say, what is this child giving him?

The word love is never mentioned.  The public’s perception of the relationship is never a consideration.  The smile, the holding of hands is not programmed.  It is not an Olympic short distance race where somebody says on your marks, get set, go.  In fact, the public is far from the couple’s mind because they have their hands full, literally, of each other.

It is not like Instagram and other look at me platforms, where the public is the motivating factor for posts that give the impression that all is well in the mini castle.  In fact, PDA-Gram is the most appropriate term for Instagram.

Affection has never been a motivating factor for Europe’s royalty, so maintaining that Megan Markle and Prince Harry breach protocol by touching each other is a fallacy.  The protocol is based on the non-existence of affection, one of royalty’s characteristics.

China and India get all the bad press about arranged marriages because we tend to overlook history.   Arranged marriages between Europe’s castles were a tool to cement land possessions and other financial interests.  The family came first, and kids understood that they had to marry a prince or princess in the interest of the family. 

England, the great colonising power has very few examples of love or affection marriages, including Prince Harry’s parents, Prince Charles and Diana Spencer. What happened privately between them was captured by the camera for posterity.  Therefore, there can be no breach of protocol because Buckingham Palace and other related palaces have few ounces of affection, to display.

By:  Nonqaba waka Msimang, author of Sweetness the novel.

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