When a man loves a woman he has to acknowledge that there are times when he will make the woman sob on the same bed they’ve always made love on. The same bed that the woman knows that handful of other women were laid on before her, and each time she wraps her legs around him, she can’t help but feel the sweat of his past lovers perspiring from the sheets to soak hers.
There are times when the woman will hate him and love him in equal measure, there are times when both of them will be broken and would require fixing, maybe a first fix would be okay, second fix, third fix probably too, but there are times when they will not require fixing because something that’s bound to be broken will always have a scar, a fracture, slowly healing like a wound, and even when it’s done healing, it will remind you of an insomnious moment.
When a man loves a woman, he has to realize that protecting her from a heartbreak is a mere impossibility, what’s meant to happen will happen, however much you sugar coat your lies and galvanize your heart behind sweet smiles, screen lock passwords and pretense of honesty – when there is so much that lies beneath one’s skin, especially beneath the skin of a woman with words unsaid to a past lover and always chasing the ghost of her first lover in every man she meets.
When a woman loves a man she got to understand that not all men are the same, but only in one context, they are just men with imperfection laced on their penises. You need a perfect man, find a broken one. There’s something humbling about their pain and loss and grief and hurt. They treat hearts as their own ego, fragile and frail. They would rather hurt themselves than hurt you and that was never US – Jack and I.
Jack and I met when I was in my nineteen and was pursuing Bachelor’s Degree in Tourism and Hospitality Management, and he was in his Twenty and was pursuing Bachelor’s Degree in Economics. We dated for three years and couldn’t make it past the fourth year, even though the idea of graduating with two Degrees – the one I was studying for and the second was the baby that would be growing in my womb (His baby. Our baby) – was pleasantly sumptuous that it became the only reason why I looked forward to my graduation. The idea of a perfect marriage was a course worth dying for. I was his to break as he was mine to mend.
Hell! if he didn’t break my limbs and hymen, everytime I pleaded with him to go slow and be soft when deep down all I wanted was for him to ravage my insides and tear me apart, but that doesn’t matter anymore. When you grow up you’ll realize that all these were just childish musing fantasies to fond over. When you come of age you’ll realize that even boys don’t treasure the night they lost their virginity, how can they remember losing something they never had in the first place?
In our first year, Jack and I, are in that honeymoon transition period where you’ve just found love again, and you’re willing to give trust a second chance. We are doing all that whiskey tasting from every street just to look good for the press, and even worse, we attend church together, and we are this close to start wearing uniforms for every Sunday service. You bet we had a dream of him becoming a church pastor and I joining the choir, have our own church.
When you’re in love you dream about weird stuff, mom sends cash and we split the bill into two, because you know what, this relationship has to hit the billboards. But here’s the sad truth, when you’re under Twenty-Seven, beautiful things never stick, except sludge and murky moments. When you’re under Twenty-Seven, you realize that dating is a fancy word adopted by the millennials to mean entitled not to be lonely. You grow up and you realize that relationships in your Twenties, are like Christmas. You only fancy it because you’re a kid, when you have all the gifts floating your way and you’re still naive to believe in Santa. When you grow up, you’ll hate Christmas, for what it truly is, a sad lonely old man desperate for gifts, so you have this humongous bill to take care of.
In our Second year of dating, Jack and I are still sweet, please compare us to the skies and the clouds, there’s no perfect place we’d rather be, if not with each other. We have mutual friends, and soon climbing the ladder to the best couples. Don’t you wish to be us? Call Jack’s phone you’ll find me, I’m his personal secretary as he is mine. Trust is a thing that comes along when you’re in love with a better you. But I’m just Twenty-Two, what do I know? Jack is Twenty-Three, how many women has he not tasted? Is he enjoying his youth or is he in a prison waiting to serve his full sentence grimacing over What If’s?
A girl must wonder, how many men should she let between her legs, for her to know the exact size she’s looking for? That’s easy, a woman knows what she wants. See I’m petite, one look at me you’ll wish you had me for just a night, Jack carries me along in every way whichever manner he wishes – on the bed, straight to the walls, on the table, and on the kitchen sink, sometimes on the balcony, and on rooftop when everyone’s asleep. And I let him, because I love him, and he loves me.
Its in that musings of wonder that things begin to change as you question whether love exists between the two of you. There’s this old tale about the law of diminishing returns, that when you drive a car for too long the tires wear out, and you seek a new one. I think that’s it, jack and I are slowly wearing out. I think Jack and I have done it plenty of times. I think we’re both bored with each other. I think nothing in me can firmly hold him like I used to, and nothing of his can break me like he used to. I’m just thinking.
He comes back in the evening and keeps his phone in his pockets and never on the table. I’m not his personal secretary anymore, can’t access his phone anymore, he sleeps with it under the pillow. And I know why.
The same way a mother knows when a child has fucked up, it’s the same way I know that Jack is hiding something. In a relationship to some extent you always have to mother your man, to know when he lies and when he’s not, and the man has to father the woman, to know when she hurts and when she’s not. Jack is gambling again.
Jack’s changing slowly by slowly, he is secretive. My insecurities and fears begin to show. And when I accidentally grab his phone when he hit the shower, I find it. The proof staring back at me. And I don’t hurt, I know Jack is not cheating. There’s been a mistake. This is not Jack’s phone, it must be his friend’s phone. There’s no way he would cheat on me.
When he walks from the shower, he finds me seated on bed, he kisses me and we end up making love.
This is not love anymore, it’s something different, I know it and you know it. I can feel it in the way he pushes himself into me as though his guilty penis is searching for absolution within my terraces. The way he holds me when we’re one, it’s like our bodies are estranged, and his heart begging mine to let his go, and my body begins to recline from his love. There’s something to the taste of his penis, that doesn’t taste the same way. He’s making love to me as though it’s a thing of the past, for the sake of appearances, to tell the little girl in me that he still loves me. I know he does, but there’s nothing as powerful as a woman’s instinct, and my conviction is that he is not cheating but still I got to ask.
He goes out, leaves me on bed thinking about him, thinking about us, and what is it i did wrong. The first thing that crossess my mind Is that maybe I’ve grown bigger than him to keep up, so I take my fingers and dip it between my legs to check on the size of my hole, but it’s all the same, I don’t know, I don’t measure these things, even if it had changed he was the one responsible for drilling.
But it’s the role of the woman to keep a man happy right? If relationship fails, or if a marriage doesn’t work, it’s a woman’s fault, right? The woman is the glue to any relationship, right? So I google ways to keep the lips tight, and when I find it, I begin rubbing lemons between my legs hoping to grow my hymen back, to hold him like I used to. S
Stupid! When you’re under Twenty-Seven that’s how you think, that the only way to tame a man or a woman is by sex, sex and only sex. Nothing else matters, but sex. They say that a man is honest when he’s drunk, but did you know that a woman is most deceitful during sex?
The next time we make love, sorry, the next time we fucked, it was the same, it was boring as fuck itself, and when he finished himself into me, I pretended to have laid on his chest feeling utterly exhausted and wasted, I decided to ask him about his phone.
He got up, and recoiled like a wounded cat and asked,
“Why did you touch my phone!?”
He got on the offensive and I on the defensive. The real issue wasn’t an issue, the issue was me touching his phone.
But I had the rights, right!? In the middle of the argument I pick his phone to show him proof, but he grabs it, then slaps my face, and before I recover, he girl out the words
“Get out of my house!”
I don’t know which one hurts. The slap or the eviction. I’m naked, we’ve just made love, and here we are. I put my clothes on and head back to my ex roommate.
There I start thinking that it’s all my fault, so in the morning I call him back, and I apologize, and he says it’s okay, then he takes me back like the prodigal girlfriend I am. He says that whatever I saw on his phone was nothing, but why did he slap me? Maybe it’s because I disrespected him, I deserved that slap. I understand now.
We get back together but things are not the same. The proof on his phone constantly grows, and the evidence was enough to incriminate him. Everytime I lie on his bed, with his penis clawed in me, I only see the women he had behind my back. But I love him, I’m not supposed to get mad, but I love him I shouldn’t be questioning him, that’s disrespectful. But a girl has limits, so I walk off to go clear my mind, and when he realizes that I’m gone, he comes after me.
When I’m away I go out, meet friends and party and I drink, and I smoke. And damn me if I didn’t find another man out there to dance to my tune. Damn me if I didn’t sit on another man’s face and let him squeeze my ass cheeks between his teeth. Damn me if I didn’t go down on a man and open my mouth between his legs, not knowing that two fucks don’t make a right. I was mad and I felt betrayed.
You can’t blame rage or hate,
Nor alcohol for losing control
It’s not the substance it’s you. The substance only heightens what we feel, what we think, who we truly are.
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Phill Ibsen
(Master of Descriptions)
©
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