She tried a love triangle I
I am a better-life seeking woman, who tried to build and keep a love triangle of two men and one woman all against safety considerations. In my life were two Adams my experimental mind believed could co-exist. Alternatively, if they would not or flatly hated the idea, they were free to shoot each other or try a mutual slaughter with a purchased or borrowed axe…
Where I had lived for more than fifteen years (I no longer do for I had to run away) the full name of Love Triangle is Doubly Dangerous Love Triangle. In Zuba Town of close to twenty thousand sexually ripe men and women, love triangle is wisely called by its fullest name against dreamers of silly adventures in the Arena of Love and, primarily, to throw cold water on it as a romantic option. Ironically, the same Zuba Town had nearly half of her sexually active men and women as reckless customers of this hateful, sometimes life-claiming brand of love.
I think I was rather two quick to class myself as a woman. In reality I am not a full-fledged one. In the eyes of The Law I am a teenager who shall cease to be so for being seven months into Nineteen Years. Still five untouched months to Twenty Years, which formally ushers a girl into womanhood and legitimate interest in sex behind closed doors but not as closed windows!
Unarguably then - or isn’t it so? - it is disappointing that I had for five years, now, begun to look twice, at times thrice, at trousers and boxers with bulging centers while I knew that the penises of their wearers were the obvious cause…
Only once I tried to slap myself, Elizabeth Jeremiah. In the end I could not or rather felt I should not. All the same I feel that all the Elizabeth’s who are alive, half alive and dead would be far from pleased with my profile, except, of course, promiscuous ones plus the Elizabeth who is quartered in rented brothels. Fully, I expect Queen Elizabeth of England or currently her Ghost to uphold an opinion of a Consummate Whore about my person while I would not be surprised if the loved-by-God-from-youth Biblical Jeremiah should ask for divine permission to briefly surface on Earth for the purpose of punching me in the face.
By 7:35pm of the 23 December 2018, I had ceased to be a virgin, no longer a clinical fact in any hospital or clinic anywhere in the world the intactness of my hymen. Unforgivably, the said 23 December 2018 was a Sunday - God’s Holy Day of Rest and - just think of it - I myself born on a Sunday the 17th September 2003 - Virgo! - handed over on a Sunday my up-till-then sacred hymen to a Sunday Benjamin, then eighteen years and I not nearly sixteen!
Was it a teenager’s mistake: accidental sex or a shaming magic beyond Elizabeth Jeremiah? I know that no true Christian - male or female - remembers the wonders of sex nor attempts to reach its wonderland while there is an approaching Yuletide and fellow Christian’s are anxious to make its success a much bigger one than the last year’s… Just that I could not help marveling at how a Sunday Benjamin of poor parentage and by nature the stingy type could acquire an expensive android of Samsung make and go the next magical length of dropping the android on my palms as a gift, on his face the easeful heart of a cheerful giver.
“No…No…No, I refuse to believe it” I muttered or thought I had muttered, my fed - with-surprise eyes helplessly fastened on Benjamin’s… Young Benjamin could not have chosen a sweeter or more ideal moment for this made transfer of ownership. I had through property mishandling just forfeited to some glad thief my much cheaper ITEL phone and, thus, had not even a spoilt one with hopes of repair to my name.
No… No… No… I should refuse to believe it! The resting of a Korean Android Handset on my safe palms while one never encircled one’s fingers round it, until after a down payment of about a Hundred Thousand Naira…
“Albeit the devalued Naira, not very strong against US Dollar…”
And - Christ! - I found it magical, too, Benjamin’s dramatic sudden ability to check the unhelpful shyness that often checked his womanizing courage, whenever it was begging time to exhibit it before an Eve. Benjamin’s new-found womanizing courage I espied from his stares at me with unblinking eyes - very meaningful - and from his now welcome now irksome repeated touches of my arms and shoulders I was neither reciprocating nor gesturing my approval of them. That I had made a point of not returning Benjamin’s physical touches of my arms, shoulders and later my cheeks and nose was true only at the beginning of the act and still true some quarter of an hour after… Before a full half hour the Mahogany Door of female coy resistance of fully needed or half needed male sexual advances had burst into flames and eventually got burnt.
As it got darker and darker my own playful hands which I had given the assignment of fending off Benjamin’s each time they touched me, were no longer doing this exactly. For each fresh playful touch by Benjamin’s, they would grip the hands and rather keep them a little longer with a little emotion or much of one bordering on stylish expression of romantic approval. Then, the mischievous hands of Benjamin dropped much lower for caresses of my fairly loose-fitting skirt… And, dramatically, virginity was ready to say “Good bye… See you, later. And not long said it!
Benjamin had used up much energy to achieve the Good-Bye event and, I remember, while he was at it, was breathing like a fast sprinter and pausing to pant like a lizard. Somehow, I sensed, even as a first timer in the sex act that Benjamin had not made a wonderful job of the thing nor a near wonderful one: rather blessed me with sweet pains and caused me an inescapable forfeiture of some quantity of the blood that swims in the female genitalia.
Benjamin and I were to see each other a second time, third, fourth, fifth, sixth and a final reluctant seventh. As far as I was concerned, I had fully paid him back for the Android phone gift. Fervently try Benjamin did in each meeting we had to envelop me in the ecstasies of erotic love and sex all without avail…
“Big determination, poor results!”
So, why would I not give a benefit of doubt to a Reuben Azi that began gradually - or was it increasingly? - to draw my attention to his existence in our Zuba Town in the manner men do when the final objective is dating and sexual intercourse?
A by-far handsomer and nice-to-hear-him-talk fellow! Also, the clever type in the devilish sense; not book intelligence, Reuben and I with safety in mind, agreed to be having our kisses and the other one only at nights, when lovers clothed or naked, standing on a spot or in motion would at worst be spotted faintly. So to say we jointly agreed to a meeting time for love making, which if it should be in a bush the parties were risking the unpleasant surprises of patrolling snakes…
I think, more than me, Reuben was enthused about the proposal by me. Rightly, I guessed from thinking it over, that the reason was his being the poorer of the two pockets that were bankrolling my luxuries and replacing my old panties with colorful ones while the proposal further clearly meant we would mostly be meeting for the action, which begins with blinding passion and ends in it. Not for the fanciful prattles of frivolous lovers simply wishing to act out their childish perception of love for public consumption.
“Eliza, you’d said 9:00pm on the dot?”
“Yes, And we’ll be quitting the business after an hour of stay: 10:00pm at the latest…
Reuben, twenty, tried and failed to choke a laugh.
“I knew it all along. You wouldn’t want to take the show up to 11:00pm. The half virgin that you are!”
For a half year, Reuben and I kept to our 10:00pm end of love-making bilateral agreement. That is to say: plus or minus. In the succeeding month, our kisses of fire and the other one would sometimes fire on, until it was much after 10:00pm or not once, not twice some few minutes to 11:00pm. Trust the fellow who says so: whoever should trust a womanizer on top of a woman is as hopeless as whoever does a woman, who is sadly without cash but badly needs it and her guy hasn’t got it…
Benjamin’s disappointing male erection - increasingly so -became a powerful reason for Reuben and me to keep powering out sexual escapades of 9:00p to 10:00pm and to finally a quarter to 11:00pm. Honestly, sometimes, I wished I could keep to what Benjamin would have wished on the business. Carelessly - or was it vainly? - he had yet to even stylishly drop it through a request that I help him to hook up a doctor or paramedic, who would supremely assist him. Once or twice, I came close to laughing my head off when, trying to sort out how I might speed up Benjamin’s reclamation of quick strong male erection, my mind wandered to China’s Acupuncture and acupuncturists!
I think God or Satan or both merely left Reuben and me to stretch our passion-filled meetings to another half year. Then Benjamin, somehow, got to know that someone else had been helping himself with his bed and pillow and who. By this I was not moved much and wisely I also refused to be puzzled. Benjamin was only facing erection challenges. Men like that even display a faster ability in detecting when a woman thought of as faithful has ceased to be so: in a manner of speaking, making up for their dullness in bed with a spy’s alertness…
When, at last, Benjamin found out about Reuben it was end time in Zuba Town. Not that the clouds of Zuba sky darkened nor did her only Uva River redden like Egypt’s plagued Nile. The already straightened hair strands of women, who wanted them in that style in salons, never got shriveled up. No. Even, the pupils of schools which still used white chalk on boards had them blackened: The Event Thunder! Reuben Azi, still twenty, could not see 1st January 2020. By 23 December 2019 - exactly one year I lost my virginity to Benjamin - he lost his life, presumably, to a pissed-off Benjamin!
Please, for the records, Benjamin up-till-now has yet to be the confirmed unidentified killer of Reuben, whose father in an anger directed towards him, buried in a less than six-feet deep grave without anything resembling a flower. I was the one who later bravely but secretly did something about placing a wreath of rose flowers on his lack-luster grave in connection with the farewell obligations I felt I owed him besides my wished final salute to his romantic showmanship. On the other hand, perfectly, I knew that Reuben’s killer could have disposed of me, too, at the time he fired his dispatching shot, just that he or she had not judged it necessary, then. Only God knows his killer’s present state of mind?
“Only God knows!”
Right now, more than half of the adult population of Zuba Town can neatly recreate the last moments of Reuben Azi, as though they, not I, were physically present on the pitch-black scene, time, some minutes to 11:00pm,-where he and I had started and finished our thing and, next, he simply wanted to savor the rich but equally risky delight of accompanying a contested girl he had victoriously slept with to some length back home. I had indeed, thought Reuben and I were, then, the only persons in that less remembered expanse by the left side of Zuba’s market square but many Zubans I later found out knew about the shouted “Reuben!” by his male killer in a feminine voice, before he fired the killing shot. They happened to know as well that the shooter’s girlish shout of “Reuben!” before the loud bang was a real voice-hiding precaution against whomever might faultlessly link it to male owner…And if it was Benjamin’s, I certainly would have!
But why at all a shooter with the intent to kill fancy the rigmarole of voicing the name of his would-be victim before the wasting act?
This time I could swear that not one of these Zubans knew why Reuben’s dispatcher had done so. I myself it took a full rationalizing one week to edge nearer and finally hit my right foot on the likeliest reason for his action. Undoubtedly, Reuben’s killer had earlier spotted us stride past the path towards our secret rendezvous and was resolved on a long or short waiting for the time we would retrace our steps for Reuben’s finisher!
It was to become my thinking Ruben’s killer had sworn to not miss his shot, as though he had gone there with a single bullet. The chances were there he would do so, if he went ahead to fire at a moving figure from his lateral positioning behind a not-too-near fence. The girlish voice ring-out of “Reuben!” was his attempt to surprisingly stop the unsuspecting walker bearer of the name for a fall frontal I-shan’t-miss hit!
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