“There she was standing by the roadside in the morning. The air was fresh. It was just a few minutes after nine. She stood there wistful in proportions, her face ever so subtly animated. The shadows of her thoughts passed over her face like the passing of the clouds above. Or like the shadow of a plane descending over a terrain, the shadow trailing it like a disembodied entity bound to the locus. It glides surreally.
She was in jeans that morning. Those jeans showed off her big thighs. They are somehow not out of proportion to her body and he could see why he was attracted to her. She was in front of Stanbic IBTC. The blue panes of the corporate colour of the bank somehow reflected her jeans. Only the panes were sleek but her jeans were roughened with wash. The jeans were lighter shade of blue, the fibres tightly wound around her thighs. She wore loafers that morning. And she wore that wistfulness on her face.
Her hair was braided, swept back, bound at the back, the band choking the strands like the binding of a local broom made from the fronds of a palm tree. Rather reminded him of the logo of a political party in Nigeria, a leitmotif of the evolutionary alignment of interests and forces. The frame of her face is slightly wide at the midpoint, giving her a bit of a rounded face. There were tiny polka dots of pigmentation on her face. She wore little makeup that morning. She looked like a model on Tyra Bank’s America’s Next Top Model (ANTM). The difference makeup makes. She was shorn of face soup.
She wore a blouse, a dark blouse littered with dots. Those dots were relative to the tiny black dots on her light in complexion face. But these dots were orderly, neat, done by an artist with obsessive compulsive tendencies. So regular and so precise. The dots on her face on the other hand seemed like a Yayoi Kusama artwork. There was some order in the randomness of it. The pixilation came in sizes.
It was that expression on her face that spoke volumes. She’s always been able to say so much with a few muscles of the face. Wise men know how to read muscle language on a woman’s face. The ever so slight twitches produce shades of colouration, much like a chameleon’s skin. Those colourations are sentences. Or maybe it’s chemical flushes that produce those colourations… But women can have an entire conversation in tones of shades on the face. There’s the “I really like you” tone. There’s the “Give me a peck” tone, which is quite distinct from the “Give me a kiss” tone, which is quite distinct from “Hold my hand tone”… There’s a whole vocabulary of facial expression. And the shades can change in milliseconds. No wonder young men get frustrated and confused. It’s due to late processing.
The look on her face that morning was a mixture of desire and pain. There was longing on her face but it was saturated with a technicolour of pain, anger, hope and desire. She was in a state of confusion. And one can see by the undecided way she stood by the road in front of the bank. Her transaction was complete but she was transfixed in thought, glued to the spot. She was more meticulous than this. Her taxi ride would have arrived by now were she her normal self. But there she was thinking about him, her face angered by a sense of betrayal. She was disappointed he sexted that girl.
He did admit it in contrition and anguish. She does admit she took it like it was treasonable felony. She couldn’t help it. He is her first boyfriend, she is his first girlfriend. She knows he loves her, really, really loves her. But then this happened. In some sense she was happy at the anguish he was experiencing. Now he knows a bit about her pain. Men can’t really understand a woman’s pain, the different varieties of it. How for example do you explain menstrual cramp to a man? He just can’t know. He can’t even guess such pain. Though a discerning man should know what makes a woman roll on the floor must be something deeply painful. The pain of the heart is worse for a woman. Disappointment goes deep, like a dull thud – a thump of the heart.
His sexting that girl evoked fears and histories in her – of hope lost, of fear of tomorrow; of insecurities and disappointment. Why do men do such things?! Why does a man have a beautiful girlfriend yet go after another woman even less beautiful? She’ll never know why. Providence has bifurcated spheres of knowledge for the sexes. There are things men can’t know and there are things women can’t know. Men and women live in parallel universes though on the same planet. And so men and women are largely ignorant of each other. There are knowledges that defy human understanding. Some things are too deep.
As she stood in front of that bank her imagination took flight, stoking her fears. What exactly did he sext her? She wants to know. Did they discuss her? What did he fancy in her? (She’s not that beautiful!) What she didn’t know and can’t know is that he didn’t sext her because he fancied her much. And it had nothing to do with comparative standards of beauty. Sin is alluring – the shared secrecy, the freedom to say things in explicit terms – R18… the virtual fulfilment of fantasy – things he can never demand of her because he respects her too much, loves her too much. So he makes those demands on the other girl. He wishes they could converse like that at times. But she’s a good girl. It was him coming to terms with his libido as he sought textual expression of bunched up desire. On one or two instances he masturbated. He later learnt how dangerous that can be. Young men grow up with sexual fantasies. She can’t imagine how many teenage boys fantasise about their beautiful female teachers. It’s a phase of life but the fantasies about women don’t depart. They’re just controlled. What the girl is able to give him that she’s not giving him is the exploration of those fantasies. He’ll never leave her for her of course, fantasy or no fantasy. It’s just a “side thing”.
In truth, she can garner wisdom from the incidence for future use in marriage. She has a right to be angry but it’s better to be knowledgeable. But here’s what he can’t know. In sexting the other girl, he’s going into a deep place in his girlfriend, stoking fears locked up in cellars of the heart. She has a vision of her marriage. She sees herself totally devoted to him, giving herself, her all. In exchange, she wants full security, his total allegiance, his connubial patriotism. He can neither look right nor left. Just straight ahead. And when he does look right or left he must see only her in his peripheral vision. She must be his field of vision. From a natural man’s perspective that can be very limiting and limited but that’s what marriage is all about. What is marriage without the giving up of supplementary mortal desires?
So she’s at that place where she’s considering breaking up the relationship. But something in her tells her that may be a big mistake. He genuinely loves her, deep. He genuinely cares for her. He genuinely wants her. That he did something stupid doesn’t take away that fact. One way or another we’re going to offend our partner. Many things are of course absorbed in marriage. Because they’re not rehashed doesn’t make the other party perfect. Marriage is the absorption of imperfections, the acceptance of human frailty, the overcoming of all with love and tenderness. She actually thought she had gotten over it. And she did take steps to move on. Only the pain came roaring back as she regurgitated the sense of betrayal. How could he do that, she kept asking herself. And what are the chances he won’t do it in future, she asked herself. Though truth is, nothing is guaranteed in life. We marry in faith.
On his part, he resolved not to give up on the relationship, to go after her afresh, like in the beginning, woo her once more. He realised it may take some time for her to come round but he’ll be persistent. She needs to get past the past by herself. And she needs to see the relationship is worth it.
There she was standing at the curb that morning, a beautiful young woman contemplating an unpleasant decision. There were pains. But there were those flashes of memory – of the first time they met, of his smile as he stooped to pick up her purse fallen. He was a gentleman. When he discovered the contents were disgorged, he tacitly turned his eyes away, and when she was done packing, he introduced himself. That was the beginning. It was almost a romance novel thing. Sometimes, life imitates art.
She had a decision to make. No one could make it for her. Not her sisters, not her friends, not her colleagues, not her parents. And just then, a text came in. It was from him: “I’m really, really sorry”, he said. “You mean the world to me. You ARE my world. I know I hurt you. But if you give me one more chance I will prove to you there’s no better man. Give us another try.
Please!” Her anger abated, a little. She decided she still wanted him. No one understands her like he does. But she decided to make him stew a little more, make him grovel just a teeny weeny more. She loves the attention she was getting, loves hearing those words from him. She tossed her phone in her bag and just then her taxi arrived.”
I hope you enjoyed the story.
Your mentor, LA
© Leke Alder | talk2me@lekealder.com
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