By the end of 1987, both Pete and I were accepted to Wits University. It was an incredibly exciting prospect to be studying for a real degree—a four-year bachelor's in aeronautical engineering.
That Christmas, I went with the Barclay family down to the South Coast of Natal. All the Barclays were there—Anne and her husband Anton, Bruce, John, Susan, Bill, and Glor. They’d rented an apartment at a resort called Southbroom, and it was the most delightful holiday. Full of laughs, golf nearly every day—we played every course up and down that beautiful stretch of coast.
John, Bruce's older brother, was mad about his music. He had a Toyota Conquest that basically doubled as a sound system. Sitting in the back, volume up, windows rattling, and Supertramp on full blast—those were the moments. I still love Supertramp thanks to that trip. John also gave me the nickname Pancho, from my Spanish childhood. The Barclays always called me Parcho after that. We had such a lot of laughs. It really was a magical time.
Then 1988 arrived, and we started at university. Pete and I were a good three years older than most of the students who were starting engineering. I remember one of the first faculty addresses by the dean, who rolled out the classic line: "Look to your left, look to your right—they won’t be here next year." The first-year pass rate was only about 33%, if I remember correctly.
I knuckled down from the start. My time at Technikon had given me a serious head start in maths and a few other subjects. When the first set of term test results came back, I was already at the top of Maths 1, neck-and-neck with a St. John’s boy named Giles Wood, who of course was three of years younger than me. He had the mental horsepower and work ethic to get accepted straight from Matric. We pushed each other all year, and I ended up finishing with six distinctions. I think I came second—maybe third—in the faculty overall. I can’t remember whether I beat Giles or not. But out of 600 students, that’s not bad. I got commendations in most subjects. It was a lot of work, but there was also plenty of partying mainly at the Cottage Club.
On the girlfriend front, much to my dad’s disappointment, there was still nobody on the horizon.
Pete had paired up with Tanya, Gary Fox’s girlfriend’s sister, and I think he’d pretty much lost his virginity around then. As for me, there was one night in Parkmore. My mum was away on holiday in the UK, and we had some girls over to the house. Swimming, a few drinks, the usual. One of them, Jenny (no not that Jenny) , was a student at Wits. Things got close that night—really close. Losing my virginity had become this enormous thing in my mind. It was bothering me. I knew I wasn’t gay, but I also knew I was intensely scared of intimacy with women. “scared” might not even be the right word—it’s hard to describe now.
In August, during the Mallorca holiday, I bumped into Mia Pearce at Palma Airport—an old school acquaintance from King’s College, a year below me. Blond, petite, cute as a button, with slightly squiffy blue eyes. I was smitten. We chatted, saw more of each other quit a bit over the following month, and after the holiday we started writing letters. A romance developed—or at least I thought it did. I spent the rest of the year looking forward to seeing her again the following Northern Hemisphere summer.
At the end of the year, my dad came down to visit from Mallorca. This time, it was Niels and Carey who had rented a house down in Hermanus, on the Cape coast. My dad joined us there, but by that stage, his eyesight was really starting to deteriorate due to macular degeneration. He was only 69—still physically strong, worked out every day, mentally completely there—but he went for a walk one day and got completely lost, it really shook him. It was hard to see him like that.
But there were proud moments too. Everyone was thrilled about my results. I’d flown myself down in my own aircraft—how I got my licence and my first chaotic flights are detailed in the next chapter.
The truth is, this chapter is about the academic high point of my life. That first year at Wits, I absolutely nailed it. But emotionally, I still felt totally unbalanced. I desperately wanted a girlfriend. I just didn’t know how to go about it.
One night in Hermanus, my parents and Niels said, “Take the car, go into town—enjoy yourself. There are loads of young people around.” So I drove into town, found a club, stood at the edge of the dance floor and watched everyone else. Dancing, drinking, having fun. And I just couldn’t. I felt so out of place. So inadequate. I left early, drove a bit, and eventually just parked and slept in the car for a couple of hours. When I got back, I told everyone I’d had a great night. If that isn’t one of the sadder admissions in these memoirs, I don’t know what is. But there it is.
I carried around a fairly entrenched sense of personal inadequacy, probably rooted in the fact that both my older siblings were absurdly good-looking—an impossible act to follow. "The Summer Bruce Grew Up Without Me" had left behind a lingering suspicion of sexual inadequacy. By adulthood, I’d reassured myself (thanks to science, tape measures, and possibly a mildly obsessive interest in data) that I was, in fact, entirely average. Respectably so. But whether my subconscious ever fully signed off on that conclusion remains unclear.
I didn’t know it yet, but 1989 was lining up to be the year my mind turned on me properly. The childhood anxiety had been a dress rehearsal—what came next was heavier, more insidious, and far less interested in logic or mercy.