“Oh my God” I uttered to myself as I stared at my right ear in the mirror, I felt I was in a pandemonium of some sort, I could not breath, I wanted to hold back this moment, to freeze it forever. The doctor had come in and was staring at me, “You’ve been talking to yourself, are you ok?” No! I wanted to shout. I need a cold shower, I need to be alone, I need someone to hold me tight. “I’m fine, just a little tired” I replied. Then, after staring at me with a slight grin on his face, he asked if I had made up my mind about covering it or living it open…I want to live it open because it looks good and wonderful and so many people would admire it…what a question! “I’ll have it covered, thank you” I managed to say. Life would have to take a new dimension, the new beginning wont be as easy as I thought it would. What I saw wasn’t what I expected, it looked like a new beginning of bad things…and it was as though I had resigned myself to being a failure and was afraid to try for success. My right ear looked horrible and ugly with the stitches on it, it looked like a battered piece of meat, it was disfigured and there was nothing I could do about it, I probably would have to carry it like that for the rest of my life…carry it off perfectly, ah ah.

I had nothing to look forward to than starting work again and thinking about cutie. The anodyne was work, and I planned to immerse myself in it totally so that I’ll have no time to think. So many things had changed and since I stopped working at that period, things began to go worse financially. Society had changed me totally, I would have to stop living my life based on people’s opinion…it was time to be my true self and ignore people’s perception of what I should be like; this is my life and no one else’s. I would have to start going out and stop locking myself indoors. Walking with a gigantic plaster on my right ear was one difficult thing for me to cope with…people never stopped bulging me with questions like “What happened to you? Did you have a fight with someone?” I got tired of narrating the same thing everyday and that made me prefer to stay indoors. But cutie had told me that another friend (Dutch) who admires me would like to see me. I’d met Dutch once. But Dutch was married…there we go again, the most interesting people who had propositioned me were all married or about to, and I flatly refuse to go out with any of them. I remembered a line from Billy Wilder’s wonderful film THE APARTMENT:

“When you are in love with a married man you shouldn’t wear mascara.

“There were times when I was strongly tempted to say ‘Yes’, just to have someone to hold, someone to share myself with. But I needed more than a worm body that talked; I needed someone who cared, someone for whom I could care.”

Dutch is happily married, and works with one of the best oil companies in the country…she’s simply every guy’s dream. As I sat opposite Dutch, she looked straight into my face and said “I invited you to have this intimate dinner with me because I wanted to know more about you”, “that’s very nice of you” I replied immediately. I requested that she played some Brazilian classics for me (The girl from Ipanema, Jao Gilberto's version), which she did without any hesitation, there were more than twenty candles burning on the table and hey, we had a nice meal…a nice quiet evening until she broke the silence. “So you are single, right?” she asked in a very curious and serious tone in her voice…you’d probably think she was about to discuss politics or some imperative issues, “hmm…. yes” I manage to mumble. She went on and on until she asked me to tell her about my last relationship and why it hit the rock… they were always asking me that, I had spent months trying to forget it, and now she was asking me to go through it again. I took a deep shaky breath and said all right…haltingly, I began to recount the events. I didn’t like her ‘for sex…that was what she wanted me for, that’s what they always want me for’, and besides…she was married, this would lead to no where except me being her sex slave. And I’ve also been labelled as a gigolo in the press…this was a time to prove them wrong because sooner or later, it’d get to the press, I had to be very careful now.
Two weeks before my resumption date at Genevieve Magazine, my sister suggested that I go to Abuja and pick her son to spend the holidays with us in Lagos, an offer I immediately accepted without any hesitation. I wanted to go out of Lagos, I needed a change of environment, I wanted to stop thinking about cutie, I just wanted to be far away, maybe the feelings would go later, or had I fallen in love again?

My trip to Abuja was by road, that was my first time travelling by road within Nigeria with the so called luxurious buses, I’ve heard horrible stories about these buses and never imagined myself travelling through it one day (even though I once travelled from Republic of Benin to Senegal by road), it actually took about ten exhausting hours to get to Abuja, Ali had promised to pick me up at the park, which he did but not until after hours of waiting, I was so happy to see my nephew…after one year of separation, after one year of having to relocate to Nigeria, lots of things had changed and were still changing…some for the better and some for the worse. My sister had to allow her son to live with Ali (the father), so she could plan her life. Mohammed had actually forgotten his mum, I was so sure…he couldn’t even remember me, but I held him in my arms, so tight to me, I didn’t want to let go of him…to me, he was like a son, I wanted to cry as I held him tight. I planned to spend four days (Tuesday to Saturday), but as soon as things began to get boring I decided to go back to Lagos on Thursday but didn’t know how to tell Ali because I’d already told him I would be going back on Saturday, but thankfully for me, the ex minister for information (Emeka Chikelu) invited me to an event, where he was being honoured by the movie industry…that was an escape route for me as I saw myself in Lagos on Thursday.

After some days I still found myself thinking about cutie, I’d sent a text message but still got no reply…then I thought a confrontation would be better, which was how I found myself sitting opposite her on that sunny afternoon. “Did you receive my text?” I asked looking straight into hr eyes without blinking an eyelid, “Yes I did” she replied, then she held my hands and looked straight into my eyes and said, “I…am…sorry”

TO BE CONTINUED.

Email Dimeji at dimprince2001@yahoo.com