Jaws dropped when a self-styled, church-choir lead-singer walked inside their church service double the size she usually was. Congregants almost mistaken her for her former Sunday Church teacher. She who looked like she was a self-made opera singer. Until she opened her mouth and spoke. There was no aura about her but shame. They were all sitting down and listening to the good news coming out of their pastor’s mouth. She was elegantly in a very expensive garb. The one that only a few boutiques in towns and cities could brag about having in their stores.
It was late Easter Friday night but had her eyes adorned with the latest top of the range eyewear. I got jealous right there on the spot, stretching my feet between two of church’s aisles. Thinking about how a good acquisition I might have for myself if she ever let me tell her how I felt about her while she walked inside the door of our church. I couldn’t pass over an opportunity of having to bat my eyelid for her. No. Not me. But her lover’s long face put me off. In a well-behaved, God-fearing environment, I wasn’t supposed to wink at her or seek to have her. Had I been caught, there’d have been hell to pay. It was akin to me spitting on her Maker’s face. Congregants therein knew God’s rules like they knew the backs of their hands. They went ahead with their regular relationships post church services. Sometimes during prayer services at the parking lots within and or outside the vicinity of their church. They Ladies and gentlemen seemed to know what they had to do. Tongues started getting wagged after she got sick barely a week after she had met me; a man she dearly loved.
She knew about my willingness to be her boyfriend but said I lacked class. I didn’t know what class was back then. The only class I knew back then was a school class. The one I had been at when I was still wet behind my ears. A second year Information Technology student had to tell me that despite my conquest being boastful she knew nothing much about love. I wondered what was it with my conquest that made her think she was special. She always told me not worry because she’d one day be mine. Only for her to keep on having her boyfriend tagging along to make me lose a bit of respect I had for her.
When she got emotional about her estranged boyfriend, she began telling me, her only way out of their relationship was to have me spend more of my time with her, that when she let me in into her life, she had long devised a plan to walk herself out of his life. Most of her friends didn’t like her boyfriend but me. They didn’t approve of their love from the onset. And told me that the more they hugged and kissed, the more they wished the world under their feet could cave in. Her own mother no longer wanted to be seen in public with her. Because a woman of her standards, a woman who had been the builder of most women’s confidence, had come to a conclusion that her daughter was bringing the women of her own community down. She might’ve been beautiful beyond belief. Beyond most men’s gasps on the street when they saw her but, she was it was like they were with an angel. After I plucked courage and asked her to be mine, the only reply she came up with was;
‘You wouldn’t have cut it in the love stakes because you were way beneath me. I was too loud for you and you were never really meant to set our girl’s only club scene alight if it wasn’t me.’
I went to the loo to go relieve myself, rinsed my face with cold tap. I couldn’t find a thing that could’ve convinced me I wasn’t meant to be hers. I sometimes say silly things but, having someone tell me she was too loud and beneath me, lacked intelligence and relevance. She seemed to care less about the pain she was causing me by telling me she was taken.
When I look at her man I saw a no real man because; I believed the hurtful things she had been saying weren’t worth coming off a woman of her stature. She knew my womanising history but she seemed not to let it worry her much — even when she saw me holding hands with other women or, getting too close to comfort with them. She should’ve become jealous and opted to not speak to me the whole night. There was something about her aura, about her nature that hurts men like me. Men who never had a chance to hold or kiss her in public.
I had a lot of admirers but, none of them came close, to making me a real man like she had. I know that I sound stupid. Like some desperate psycho who will stop at nothing to get what he want—even if it means dividing the community and hurting people the world over. There was one thing I never stopped doing; pursuing a woman of my dreams.
I didn’t seen her face in years. When my aides cautioned me to cease pursuing her; as I had a woman I truly loved living with me under one roof. They further told me that a man who I hadn’t taken seriously way back then, wanted to have his uncles and my ex-girlfriends uncles; to convene a family meeting for the two of the lovebirds. To officially have them become Mr and Mrs Dance Floors within a short space of time. Things had changed so much. She was rumoured to be expecting their first child. I might’ve taken long to show up at her front door. But I really wished her well in her marriage life.
