The Africans/5

I need Adelaide even if, for now, she is unattainable. This is what I was thinking as I walked home later that day with Ugo and Eddy, as we came out of the Russian language class that we had just finished with Sergei Nikolaivitch. I couldn’t quite understand the strong sense of connectedness that I was starting to feel towards her; she didn't yet know me but it was as if I was developing a feeling of love for her! How can I love someone who already belongs to someone else and who...from the way she always looks composed and classy...I was starting to feel is out of my league? Yet i felt drawn to her; as if there is something about me that destines me to wanting those things that exist beyond my reach and which are able to hurt me.

The guilt started to flood back. The guilt has always been there really; lurking in the shadows, and waiting for that opportunity to present itself when it would remind me that I am less than a man: you see, real men do not become emotionally involved with prostitutes the way I did with Betty.

It happened at the University of Jos. After my registration on that first day...when I had crashed into Funmi near the admission clerks office...I was allocated a room at the Bauchi road hostel. This temporary accommodation was the only available space for most of the new students as the Naraguta hostel complex and the students village were already filled up. And it was located next to a noisy motor park on the very busy Bauchi Road. At the back of this hostel was a densely populated slum area where students visited for their groceries and for some leisure activities.

One Saturday evening, barely a week after I moved in, my room mate had invited me for a drink and pepper soup at one of the beer parlours that can be found on the long stretch of unpaved road running right through the neighbourhood. The beer parlour turned out to be a seedy brothel. And as we entered the large dimly lit hall we had been greeted by the oppressive smell of cigarette smoke and bodily sweat hanging thickly in the air. Loud music blared from the speakers, that hung at the four corners of the large hall and you could see men and women dancing lazily in the centre of the large hall, holding their bottles of beer in their hands as they danced. We sat at one of the few unoccupied tables and my roommate had ordered some beer. And while we waited for our drinks to arrive, two scantily clad women hastily made their way towards our table possibly to get to us before their competitors.

“Una wan f…ck?”The larger of the two women asked, wanting to know if we wanted sex. The one that spoke was plump and was verging on the boarders of being obese. Neither of the women would ever pass as being beautiful as they both stood trying to strike a pose, which i am sure they believed was seductive. I was speechless, never having been confronted with such boldness from women, but my room mate who had been glaring at them both hissed. “Make una commot here, useless ashawo!” he spat out at them asking them to get lost.

Our bottles of beer came and we finished them and then went back to our hostel without really discussing what had happened. It was as if my roommate was used to the whole scene so didn't see anything worth talking about. But the very next day I had gone back alone. And it was there that I made the acquaintance of Betty…the smaller of the two prostitute who had approached us the previous day. Betty was in her late 20’s and had been in the trade since her late teens. And it was she who dis-virgined me and introduced me into manhood, after she had collected her price for the privileges; leaving me also with a lot of guilt and a vow not to ever return to that brothel again.

But I did; again and again. And each time, I would feel even more defeated from the time I sneaked out of my room under the cover of night…with my heart forcefully pounding against my rib cage in beats of anticipatory excitement…hoping that nobody would see me in my moment of weakness and in its inevitable aftermath; an aftermth characterised by a lingering feeling of intense guilt, which would remain until the very next time.

It was always on those days when I had a close encounter with Funmi that I would find myself craving the warmth of Betty’s embrace; on most of our lecture days I would sit at a corner of the hall from where I could relish in the flashes of her smile and in the fleeting caress of the gaze from her lovely brown eyes; rare privileges that she would dish out to me unconsciously but which always left me weighed down by a realisation that those endearing looks and the smiles were not inspired by me. And on those days, after the darkness of night had encroached, I would sneak out in search of recognition in the arms of Betty the prostitute; because It is there alone, that I have come to know what it feels like to be accepted as a man. And it is there, in the warmth of that acceptance as I was receiving my fix of flesh, that my guilt was birthed.

I was walking through the park with Ugo and Eddy who were chatting away about “Russian babes“, and I was thinking of how fortunate it is that we can not read each others minds and glimpse at the secrets that we all hide. But it was the image of Adelaide that was the strongest in my mind. Because it felt as if she is the one who holds the key, which will liberate me from the guilt that gnaws slowly away at the fabric of my fragile soul.