I'd hug you like a long-lost child, I'd smother you,
We'd sit close to each other for hours and I'll savour every bit, we'll forget that it's late,
I'd kiss you till all that red lipstick is gone; I'd give you another hickey...
...then I'd say the sweetest things to you,
Before the beginning
Every beginning has a before, a sort of 'pre-genesis', if you will – in Greek mythology, you had Olympian gods like Zeus, Athena and Ares who one might think were the beginning of the world in the lore, the first beings; but as you know, before the gods there were titans like Kronos (time), Moros (destiny) and Chaos (void) who was supposedly the first titan (I can't remember where I read this, but Chaos is sort of analogous to the void described in Genesis 1:2, not that I'm comparing Greek myth with the Bible).
I started telling this story from the beginning but forgot about what happened before...so here's a few paragraphs on the Jay pre-genesis, on the story that led to the story.
In May 2012 I was on one of those mid-semester breaks from school and I was home for a few days; I had spent most of the days at home and then this day I decided to go visit a few of my friends in my old neighbourhood.
So, I was walking to this particular friend's house...when I heard the sound of a gate opening; as I turned my head to look, in a split second I worked out in my head who it most likely was or rather who I wanted it to be, considering the street I was on and the house whose gate was being opened – and I was right.
As she stepped out and turned slightly to shut the gate, we stared at each other briefly and instead of waving, nodding or some form of 'acknowledgement', I just kept on walking. It was the wrong thing to do, I knew it instantly and I had to correct it...we were neighbours for years and even though we never said anything to each other back then and I had moved, it was only proper for me to say hi to her – I had to correct the impression that I hadn't 'grown' or matured from the time when we were neighbours, like someone said 'Maturity is bridging the gap between knowing the right thing to do and doing that right thing' (nobody said that, it just came to me as I was typing).
It turned out that the guy I was going to see used to be friends with her back in the day when we were all neighbours and even liked her at some point (he probably still did, it's hard to get over her) – so I decided I'd ask him for her number and I did, he obliged and later when I got back to school, I sent her a message saying hi and all that stuff...
That's how Jay got my number, it's why she was able to send the message, and it's why I was so gone for her that I had just walked out of NYSC camp, about to take a night bus for the first time ever, from Kaduna to Lagos.
Hodophile – Origin: Greek. Definition: One who loves to travel
I've always thought of myself as a hodophile of sorts, but Nigerian interstate roads don't make for a good place to unleash one's inner adventurer – needless to say, there are countless number of things that make night travel in Nigeria very risky business; I knew all of this but wasn't in the least bit perturbed, at the time it didn't seem daunting at all that I was going to travel for over 10 hours on bad roads – I was so fixated on my goal and didn't care about anything else. I was sprung.
I had eaten her Akara, as they say.
The policemen drove me a good distance before dropping me at a point where I'd take an okada to the bus park, I think it was called Kao park or something like that; I got there just in time, as there were only about 3 or 4 free seats left- I bought a ticket for five thousand bucks and took a seat close to the window. What was really surprising now that I think about it, is how so far, everything that could have gone wrong didn't go wrong; all those '50-50' and 'almost' situations had all swung in my favour; I literally walked out of camp against some really slim odds, the bus (which was the last bus going to Lagos for the day) could have left but hadn't, even the fact that I got a window seat felt 'right'; a few days ago I was almost sure I had come to the end of my little fairy tale with Jay but I was completely wrong – we were barely half-way through foreplay.
