...I needed something big, something lasting – I needed a home –run; I needed 'our flame' to burn like the bonfire we were going to have in a few days.
Excerpt from this chapter.
Have you ever wondered if in Homer's Troy, Achilles' mother dipped all of him into the river Styx? Paris wouldn't have been able to kill him and we wouldn't have the expression Achilles' heel.
I do wonder, the same way I wonder if Jay didn't send that message – what if she picked up her phone, thought about it and went like "Nah..." or had somehow lost my number from last year. What if I didn't watch 21 Grams that night and I never began to type these words?
I'd never know; all I know is that Jay sent the message and I lived this story – I saw 21 Grams and I'm writing this story. If this story had a foreword, it would've been written by Jay and she'd probably tell you to start reading from chapter 6 – I think in many ways, for her this story really started in chapter 6.
Believe it or not it took me 4 months to get through chapter 5; the words just stopped pouring out and then I got really busy with work so I stopped trying altogether. It feels good to be back to this, I've typed over ten thousand words and I feel like I've not even started to really tell this story.
A face that lays an assault on all your senses
Jay was something special; she knew it and she owned every bit of it; she knew she looked like heaven, she knew she was a lot of woman (not a reference to size) – she was sweet, yet she knew what to say to make you feel terrible – she loved making you feel like you were everything to her, but she never hesitated to switch things up when she felt you were getting too comfortable and needed to be checked (I once saw a documentary where someone said Amy Winehouse was exactly this way with her friends...but really, which smart person isn't) ; she was all of it...the yin and the yang – and I wanted all of her...I wanted to touch her, taste her, smell her but I couldn't, I could only hear her...over the phone, it just wasn't enough and I had to do something about it; but what could I do, I was stuck in camp for 3 weeks facing the possibility of not seeing her before she travelled.
The first week of camp wasn't so bad given that I had this preconceived notion that it was going to be terrible. I had made friends with a few malo guys and was slowly getting used to the weather. Morning march was beginning to be fun; we had to wear these nose-and-mouth masks to protect ourselves from all the dust and I remember how I'd walk towards the marching ground doing these impressions of Bane from The Dark Knight Rises (something about my mask and boots made me remember Bane) with excitement – I'd usually send Jay a message that she'd wake up to by the time we were done marching, which was usually around 6am.
I'd sleep for about one hour after getting back from morning march then rush to get to the line for fetching water; I almost always met a long queue at the well – there was a long queue for everything as anyone who did NYSC would know; the queue for bathing and using the toilet was the worst. There was free breakfast for anyone who was willing to stand on a queue for minutes; something about those food queues reminded me of Nazi Death camps like Auschwitz and Dachau, like the people queuing were going to die, not in gas chambers, but because the food was just really bad – I for one never stood on the food queue, I had a lot of money so I was always in mami market trying out different things; I remember bouncing into mami market listening to some Wizkid song, trying to decide which food joint to eat at.
When I wasn't marching in the morning or evening, or charging my phone at the 'charging station' in mami market, or asleep...I was chatting with or talking to Jay. I went to bed thinking about her and I'd wake up smiling because of her; her display picture on BBM was still that same one from chapter 3 that had 4 of her fingers turned inwards with purple nail polish on. I almost always slept late because we'd talk up until maybe 3 am and then I'd only get an hour or two of sleep before I'd have to get up for the morning march; but I didn't mind; I'm usually not one to joke with my sleep but for Jay I was willing to do anything – and those hours meant a lot for 'us' as they helped compensate for all the miles between us.
