Friday, 26 April 2019

The Ultimate Buzzkill

Every guy has their "holy shit" girl. The one so twisted, so deviant, so possessing of a mind that conjures sexual scenarios rivaling the ones that live in our own fevered minds, we drop to our knees and exclaim, “Dear God, by all that is holy, please let me get a piece of this and I swear I’ll go to church every day and twice on weekends.”
For me it was… well, let’s call her Omontinya, because that’s her name. She was about five foot four, all hips, lips and tits, with a rear end that launched from the small of her back with such otherwordly curvature that rumor held she couldn’t slide her jeans on without applying for a city building permit.
Omontinya was a co-worker of mine at my first job out of grad school a couple years back, a gift of eye-candy from the heavens who reduced the menfolk to Spoon-Size Shredded Wheat and had the HR people scrambling to rewrite the company dress code. She also talked about sex the way guys talk about sex and by “the way guys talk about sex” I mean all the time. I’d listen to her describe a titanic blow job she’d given her boyfriend the night before while the circuits that direct blood flow within my body essentially lifted the tollgates and said, “Omu, you can take the day off.” After work, crammed into a dark corner at Bannilux and dizzy with beer and cigarette smoke, my eyes would glaze as she grabbed her spectacular breasts to punctuate a story or tried to stick her tongue in the ears of Isioma from Accounting.
Needless to say, little or no work got done on my watch. Days I should have been focused on the Airtel  file were spent tracing the outline of Omontinya’s mouth, imagining her fingernails tearing up my back, and dreaming of her ample derriere slowly being lowered onto my face. I was obsessed; not in a creepy “I saw you in my ewa-agonyi this morning” way, but an awe-inspired “surely that girl could tear me apart” way.
Then, one evening, during an after-work drinkfest, the stars aligned and the moon embraced Capricorn and every other guy she knew apparently left the east coast because I became the target of Michele’s affections. Or her drunken groping. Or whatever you want to call it, I was it. And I wasn’t complaining. It began with a few grabs of my thigh under the table, then a talking-so-close-to-my-ear-I-swear-she’s-trying-to-lick-it thing, then a full-on pinned-to-the-walls-by-her-breasts assault when I returned from the men’s room.
She kissed my mouth in a way that you could have worked over my nuts with a rolling pin and I wouldn’t have felt a thing, then invited me to her apartment to watch "wedding party,” which I assumed to be code for “screw ourselves retarded.”
Back at her place, things started working just as I’d always fantasized they might, although without the singing moose and sideline cheerleaders. Her shirt came off, her jeans went flying, and she jumped at me with a fervor. After about fifteen minutes of floor rolling, as I finally retained control of my senses and began priming myself for the task ahead, she started licking my ear and talking up a filthy blue streak that essentially dipped my brain in the fry-o-later.
At least until she rolled on top of me and whispered, “What if I had a cock?”
I could almost hear my hard-on collapsing. “Huh?”
“What if I had a cock?” she repeated. “What would you do?”
“Er… besides recoil in terror and run screaming from your apartment?”
Apparently that wasn’t the answer she wanted. She rolled off me, and looked forlorn for a few minutes  before getting up and taking a cigarette from her purse. A few seconds later, the TV was on, and we were watching wedding party. And that, as they say, was that.
For the record, she didn’t have a cock… and I sometimes wonder what that whole business was all about. But in the vast pantheon of strange-ass shit said to me in the heat of passion, this stands tallest. And still the single greatest buzzkill of my life.

Thursday, 25 April 2019

Even Turtles are Winners Too

And my dear friend, if you ever find yourself worrying that you’re growing slowly in life, I want you to be aware that it’s okay to feel this way and that you’re safe to keep on doing what you love. Remember, as long as you keep on going you don’t have to be afraid of anything. Progress is progress. A step forward is a step forward. It’s better to go on with your journey as calm as a turtle knowing that by moving little by little your destination is a place where you didn’t choose to settle

Sunday, 21 April 2019

Learn to be with yourself.

Spend money. 
Change your hairstyle. 
Sell your old clothes and pursue your new style with the money you get from it. 
Be strong. 
Be patient. 
Get drunk if you want to, but not every weekend. 
Buy a chocolate bar every week when your favorite tv show is on. 
Take hot baths. 
Wake up early. 
Start jogging. 
Write. 
Find a friend who will listen to you and don’t stop until you find it. 
Study. 
Read. 
Make your Instagram cool. 
Write some more. 
Get that damn piercing. 
Buy bath bubbles and bath more. 
Adore your body. 
Shave, for yourself. 
Book flights for next spring. 
Write this day down, write it all down. 
Cry. 
Finally feel some homesickness. 
Learn to be in silence. 
Learn to stand being alone. 
Drink lots of coffee. 
Get ready for Christmas. 
Feel smart at school. 
Spend a weekend alone. 
Take lots of selfies. 
Eat chocolate while watching reality tv-shows. 
Meditate. 
Stretch. 
Learn ballet. 
Buy overprized coffee. 
Learn to be with yourself.

Poison

People do not knowingly join “cults” that will ultimately destroy and kill them. 

People join self-help groups, churches, political movements, college campus dinner socials, and the like, in an effort to be a part of something larger than themselves. 

It is mostly the innocent and naive who find themselves entrapped. 

In their openhearted endeavor to find meaning in their lives, they walk blindly into the promise of ultimate answers and a higher purpose. 

It is usually only gradually that a group turns into or reveals itself as a cult, becomes malignant, but by then it is often too late.

Our Silence...

Have you heard of the term “Bystander effect”. This came about after a 28 year old woman, Kitty, was raped, stabbed and murdered outside her apartment while 38 people looked on and did nothing.
This led to a research carried out in 1969, five years after Kitty’s murder, which was termed Bystander Apathy (effect). Basically, it proved that the more people there are available in an emergency situation, the less likelihood there is for someone to intervene.
Today’s poems remind me of this story and forgive me for starting this post with a downer. But, I thought to share it because I believe we all need a reminder that as heavy as our words, our silence is heavy too.
Town watches them take Alfonso by Ilya Kaminsky
Now each of us is
a witness stand:
Vasenka watches us watch four soldiers throw Alfonso Barabinski on the sidewalk.
We let them take him, all of us cowards.
What we don’t say
we carry in our suitcases, coat pockets, our nostrils.
Across the street they wash him with fire hoses. First he screams,
then he stops.
So much sunlight—
a t-shirt falls off a clothes line and an old man stops, picks it up, presses it to his face.
Neighbors line up to watch him thrown on a sidewalk like a vaudeville act: Ta Da.
In so much sunlight—
how each of us
is a witness stand:
They take Alfonso
And no one stands up. Our silence stands up for us.

I'll Like To Believe

The sun spreads it golden rays,
Illuminating everything, 
In its path-
Except for me.
You see,
Mornings offer no solace,
Just as nighttime offers no rest.
But I rise, 
And I dress,
And I greet the neighbour,
And I down a cup of coffee:
With just enough vigour
To say to the world-
I am okay.
But I’m not.
The sun spreads it golden rays,
Illuminating all,
And I’ll like believe-
One day, 
I’d feel it’s light in my bones
Too..

The Love We Withhold...

I kept waiting for the world to hand over to me, that which I withheld from myself. I sought for it, chased it, demanded it. That fuzzy feeling which one gets from being appreciated or loved or cherished.
I stood on tiptoes awaiting that one person who would make my world all sunny again, that one person who would make me feel like my presence is needed and my absence dreaded, that one person who would make me feel good about myself.
And what I got, was a ball of spitfire. From afar, it looked like a beautiful powerful light, just the kind to elicit the feeling of stardom, but up close… It burned. And I learnt, the world is a reflection of the image I view myself in. (I saw charred skin in the mirror, and the world gave me one).
-We cannot expect love from the world until we are willing to give that love to ourselves. And when we get to know who we are, we accept who we are, we love who we are, the world as we see it would be different.