[So I have been AWOL for some weeks. Yes, my muse went on a holiday – (Uh, the excuse every lazy writer gives. Lol). I think the euphoria of winning the #Writeright2 competition frizzled me up. I promise to complete this story whether I like it or not. My muse has a gun to my head now 🙂
It was noon. The trees waved their branches under the blazing sun. The breeze blowing into the hall was hot. I stared in exasperation at the unmoving dusty, off-white ceiling fans above. When the State University had been built about a decade ago, all the fixtures were new and worked. But now the decay was evident everywhere – in the broken louvres and the doors falling off its hinges and the chipped asbestos. Last night, I had a restive sleep. I tossed from one end of the mattress to the other. I could not decide which bothered me more – the sound of Uncle Lambert’s snores equivalent to a growling DAF engine or my wandering thoughts.
My head had been heavy as I trekked the short distance to the campus. But as I sat close to the window of the auditorium and watched the many delectable, curvy ladies winding their derrière this and that way, the gloom had disappeared. My eyes stayed on yummy lips. Angelina Jolie’s pout would dim beside hers. She was a direct entry student who had joined us in the second year we just started. She always wore so much gloss on her lips that I used to imagine everyone could kiss her and get some lubrication on their lips too. Her friends called her Dee – I had wondered what that stood for – Dolapo, Deinde, Daisy. Daisy, I loved the sound of that, so I had named her that in my mind. She settled into a chair, two seats to my right. While my eyes were still riveted on yummy lips, Professor James entered the lecture hall in his mismatched clothing – a purple adire shirt over red trousers with images of Mickey Mouse. The girls sitting behind me guffawed, “This man sha, doesn’t he know he looks ridiculous?”one of them commented. If Professor James had heard the stifled laughs, he seemed unperturbed by it. With his spectacles perched on the bridge of his nose, he launched into a two hour lecture on the Cold War. At first, I stayed focused and watched the movement of Prof. James lips. Then, my mind drifted. I remembered Uncle Lambert sitting under the Mango tree, a chewing stick in the corner of his mouth. He cleaned his mouth, first with a chewing stick and then a toothbrush. Just as he used to do before he left. Maami who had been preparing to leave for her stall in the market had ignored him. I didn’t know if Baami was still inside his room. As he aged, he’d begun to reduce his workload. Sometimes, he only went to his plantations once or twice a week.
“Go well, Tade,”Uncle Lambert had responded to my greeting as I left the compound.
“Can I see your note?” The voice jarred me back to the class. Her fingers brushed against mine as she stretched over the space between us and took the notebook without waiting for my answer. Unconsciously, I raised the back of my palm which had come in contact with her skin to my nose. It was a heady, fruity scent. She smelled like ripe oranges – the type you sucked all the juice, turned it out and ate the pulp. I was struck dumb. I watched as she trailed a manicured red nail on the lines of my notebook. She wrote a little in her notebook. Then, she handed it back to me. “Thanks,” she beamed. My mouth hung open. It was like staring into the sun with unshielded eyes. The rest of the class was a haze. I imagined running and hiding behind trees with Daisy, like in those Indian movies. Her image replaced those of the girls in the Better Lover magazines I kept under my clothes in my portmanteau. I pinched myself and swallowed the phlegm of passion that had lodged in my throat. Lekan had nicknamed me an eunuch, “Okobo,” he’d teased me as he counted the number of girls he’d been with on his fingers and lost count. Lekan, an indigene of Asero like me was not in awe of the city girls in the campus. He went after them and conquered them in droves. I often had it all in my head but a paralysis took over when I needed to act.
I was still in my dreamy state as I left the campus after my classes. The walk back home was often like fufu and ila alasepo gliding down the oesophagus – as I descended the hill. In the mornings, I made the sweaty ascent. I was already inside the gates before I saw them. A large crowd gathered under the mango tree. “What’s happening?”I asked.
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