MY FAVOURITE EATER GOT A GIRLFRIEND. MOURN WITH ME.

Two days ago, I sent a message to a friend that read, “Musing a lot today, and I have some thoughts I’d like that we converse about, if you can be an active participant. If now is a good time.” A minute later, they responded, confirming availability, and I took to letting my fingers race across the screen. I was lying on the bed, a song by Fave which had been on repeat since I started my commute home from work that day was playing loudly through my Bluetooth pods, and I had a plate of ofada rice opened in front of me.  

That evening, my musing with this friend wandered through the subjects of belief, belonging, and the negotiations we must make with ourselves to stay true to either. I wrote about how I have lately felt the need to take a decisive stance in the workplace: to either voice, or quietly contain, my lack of care for religion. I wondered whether kinship rooted in shared values could ever truly be found without honesty; how the courage to speak out about one’s unbelief is, in these very believing environments, to have faith in one’s authenticity, to stand firm even when it may cost one community. I said that surely sometimes, the castaways of one circle must find shelter within others, that perhaps the only way to thrive within a conviction, whatever its nature, is to build around oneself, a gathering of kindred minds, those who mirror and steady our resolve when uncertainty begins to creep in. 

I wrote on marriage, and how I was realising the fact that for many, it would have to be less a union of hearts and more a credential of stability, a concession to the capitalist theatre that measures responsibility by the ring on one’s finger and the weight of dependents attached. I recalled a conversation with someone at work who admitted that their choice to marry had been shaped in part by the expectations of this white collar jungle, an understanding that appearance will often be rewarded over essence, and how love, belief, and even selfhood must bend to the subtle economies of perception.

With this virtual company, a conversation that began at 7 pm lasted until a few minutes shy of ten, though, as I had half expected, the conversation drifted far from the musings that led to it. 

The question that opened the subject we eventually circled around for most of those three hours was one I had asked almost offhandedly, slipped between my musings.

“Have you missed me?”

His response to the question came slower than the ones he had given to the previous messages.

“I am conflicted about this feeling. I have really missed you, but I have also dealt with guilt anytime it comes up in recent times because I have started seeing someone. It is a weird feeling.”

I read it once, twice, and then again. The words pulsed with a contradiction that mirrored the subtle thrill that was beginning to stir beneath my skin, even as I began to get conscious of what his new status would mean as it concerned us. I was thinking, but I also really wasn’t. 

As we continued to talk, I found myself writing less to respond and more to understand the feelings his words had inspired. I told him this, too. 

I plugged the pods in my ears now, and the sound of the music made me feel alive. A few minutes before sending my first text to him, I had allowed myself to be acquainted with a certain Mary with last name Jane, so as you could probably imagine, these feelings, this expansiveness of thought, had quite the foundation to spring and fly, fly high. 

I asked more questions, and he gave responses, and asked some. In words, my drunken fingers asked permission to speak through my feelings unfiltered, on the raunchy. 

And so, I wrote. I wrote of the small intimacies that had stitched themselves into my memory, the beauty of this our dance. I wrote of memories of how he would touch me, cradle my face in his hands and kiss me, resist my push to please him because he always wanted to dine on my body first. Hands circling breasts, mouth trailing down. Down, till he would latch his mouth on my already helplessly aroused self.

I met him at a time when I was content to let my fingers alone adore my body. I had turned my back to the fleeting reprieve I would seasonally seek from hands other than mine. It was becoming a pattern, meeting another, exploring what small excitement could be found in the knowing of that stranger, and then retreating before the tide became heavy, the flow growing into something that demanded I join a ship, any -ship. I was also reaching the point where the crazy that came with living demanded something stronger than conversation, bodies could help, so I decided to quit and find distraction, help from the bosom of the Lord (ish). 

That was of course, around the time I received the notification that he was in our dear sin city, the city where all vows go to die. The married may understand that quip a bit better. 

I do not remember the first time he kissed me, but I remember the first time he lowered himself between my thighs, reverent, and placed his lips against, between mine. That evening, we had gone to the supermarket to pick up a few household items, laughing over things I can no longer remember, tossing unnecessary items into the basket. One of them was the bottle of gin that I had slipped in despite knowing how poorly my body handled the mix of alcohol and cannabis, how it always punished me after, shutting me down, forcing sleep and withholding function until it was satisfied that I had learnt my lesson. 

That evening, however, I did not care. 

I was content to throw caution to the wind and let the mix ruin me. Thinking back, it might have been because I had forgotten how much that combination fucked me over, how it toyed with my balance before dragging me under. We had a movie playing on the television, but all it did was fill the room with soft background noise and light. We barely watched it. You may be familiar with how these things go. 

I touched him first, using my nails to trace idle patterns on his thigh, pretending carelessness even while we both knew that there was intent in every action of mine. Sometimes I played with his hair, the dense coils at the top, the softer ones near his neck. I let my fingers rest there, letting them get used to the contrast in texture, and then seeking the warmth beneath, and then, lower, into the cream t-shirt he had on. I remember the warmth of his skin against my arm, the way the air grew charged, tilting toward something we both knew would not stay innocent for long.

It did, though, because someone fell asleep.

It would be the next time we saw each other, clear-headed, sober and present, that we began to learn our bodies. We existed in a space that allowed pleasure and friendship, and as it was a rhythm that did not demand constancy, we met sometimes once in two months, sometimes twice in a month, sometimes not at all for a long while, and now, never again, for I must return and consecrate my body to the Lord. 

I told him that I would miss our rhythm, the way our conversations always meandered into laughter, then quiet, then skin. He wrote of learning to relax in pleasure. Of learning to let self, body, feel without holding back. Of touching self for the first time to select memories. On the beauty of all the brief moments.

All is well that is done well. For all that begins must always have an end. 

This morning, I wrote in my notes:

I am grateful for the gift of finding home, in its many forms, in people. For the ability to rest in their presence without being consumed by, or subscribing to the paradigm that what was once real in the past can only be real if it continues to be real now and in the future.

I am grateful for the freedom to savour the beauty of another without tainting that knowing with the need to possess or define it. To delight in the gift that someone is, for as long as time allows, or till I am content with the depth of that knowing, or till they are content with the depth of that knowing, and let that be enough.

To love, to care, to be tender. To breathe in the beauty of something transient, something true.