When No Means Yes...
You know – there are things in this life that you swear never to do again – never, never, never. Some of these vows are easily reached – like that time when, in an epileptic fit of blind rage, you picked the forest as your permanent abode, precisely because mum had forfeited your supper to her cattle that you had lost.
Or that other year when you ruled that radio should become an eternal no-no, for its unredeemable sin of voting Dembo fourth on the ’94 charts. Number four! What abomination!
Simple decisions, made on the spur of the moment; of course you knew you were lying to yourself.
But there some precedents, whether made on the turn or after careful musing, that leave a permanent mark. Yea; they thought it was a joke when I just upped one day and realised that the slimy green leaf called okra sliding down my throat was just as bad for my masculine metabolism as a conscious gobsmacking gobbling of phlegm.
It’s not that I’m allergic to okra. Hell, no. I just loathe it – there are some things you just abhor, aren’t there? And I happen to hate okra; and the joke just turned fourteen now. You know what; I think I hate it more and more each year; more so now that I discovered mucus can be spurted from a whole lot more subtle places other than the only nasal passage.
There is one other chapter I swore never to visit again in my living daylights, even in my next life – and it is this page I’m writing now. The last time I closed this, I felt like a man putting a lid on his Golgotha, after a lifetime of murderous skulduggery. Writing something – anything – about you, even complementary or derogatory, was one thing I knew I simply could not afford; what with our love-hate relationship littered with love and hate.
So you can imagine my shock that I find myself chained on this chair before McIntosh’s Apple, selling my ass out as it is. Just like my cancer-surviving desperate housewife, Linnet Scavo discovered to her mortification that, in lieu of the cancer recurring, she was in fact gravida with a set of twins – again; just as she had raised her hand to knock on menopause’s portal. OMG; come on doc, are you sure it’s not the cancer?
But there I was staring at skeletons in a cabinet I had sealed a gazillion years ago. Thinking: I guess in the end, the circle traverses both its nadir and its zenith, and you find yourself back at the beginning. Only that I overshot the beginning and grinded to a halt somewhere in the middle.
But I was not thinking about the middle – I sort of careened past it on my way from the Midlands the other day (I wonder why I’m smiling – I hope it has nothing to do with the Midlands and the middle) and that encounter, cyclonic though it was, got me thinking about, well, the middle. Ah, the middle – whose grandiose experience had driven me into jotting an impulsive piece as I watched the rain lashing the windows of George’s bus (it wasn’t his actually; George worked, maybe still works, for the bus company).
It was good.
I always wake up during a wet dream. Lost in the labyrinthine Bermuda Triangle of Whatshername’s fig leaf, I blindly screw my way between her water and her earth, both big Johnny and lil’ Johnny getting hotter and hotter, more and more sclerotic as the legion of hopeful wannabe-the-next-Johnny-generation swim blindly in search of the XX antidote. Then it happens – out of the blue, just as big Johnny is about to retch his gusto, Presto! I’m up and wide awake, gleaming with saline sweat.
There goes Johnny’s beautiful night. Again.
Funny, you should think, that I talk of the big and little Jononos; because just the mention of that name brings with it a deluge of memoirs about past Jononos. Jonono, the teacher, Jonono the friend, Jonono the enemy, Jonono the lover – or is it Jonono the wannabe lover? I ask because it was this confusion that led to a lot of pages like this suffering apocalyptic abortions.
I was angry; you pouted sullenly. I had a lot of reasons to be angry. You had a lot of reasons to sulk – and that slinging match at the PSC offices was just an inevitable eruption of ash and cinder – the Krakatoan cesspools of our fucked up brains spewing the long overdue lava that was a culmination of our drawn out seismic relationship.
That Jonono guy; he set us apart – and brought us together. He was our source of conflict and our source of unity. Our love and hate. You loved and hated him; I floated somewhere between love and hate – you could call it indifference – all the time wondering what it was that sent you rushing back to his office, possibly into his scrawny, tiny, emaciated ebony arms, when you were telling me a different story.
Believe me; I so badly wanted to believe your tears when you wept and told me how his premiership abducted you and imprisoned you in that New Media office of his. Fuck. I could murder his kidnapping ass. Then the Chaletgate Scandal broke out. Oh my God. Even now, four fucking years later, I can feel the bile rising inside me like mercury on a hot day in the Sahara. Fuck. I could murder your lying ass.
I looked at you and for a brief moment, I had visions of the gullible Samson and his deceptive Delilah. Listening to you singing to me a tired, heart-rending rendition of Britney Spears’ ‘I was born to make you happy’, something broke in me and the acidic lava I had held at bay all these years burst the shell of my crumpling skull, and I stopped caring. Just like that. Stopped caring about what happened to you or to me for that matter. I think I did make it crystal clear that day at the office in the presence of the poor one (who the hell names their child Karombo? I suspect he comes from UMP – Uzumba Maramba Pfungwa – because that is exactly where the Dump O’Stupidos of our beloved nation originate from).
“What the fuck do I care about what happened between you and the fucking Ahoy Union Premier at those chalets! Why should I even wanna know that?”
I even cemented my disengagement from you in verse.
Hello femme fatale
Femme fatale?
Yea; that you must be
La belle sans merci; you are
Everything I said about you, please forget
Then, I was crushin’
Now, I’m flyin’
I’m awake now
Less’n less of you i think now
And not good too...
But the wheel of fortune kept turning and turning, and soon it was back where it started – and that was when I realised that I’d been lying to myself all along. I did care KP (yea, that’s what I call you – but you’re never gonna know that). That’s why I got that much pissed. Yea, it is drunk I know. They were right when they said there was a very thin line between love and hate.
And I once did love you. I still do, but… it’s kinda different now. Back then, I…loved you. I mean I loved you loved you; you know?
Ever since those first days at the Poltech when you would bring the very short jacket and the very long skirts to class. I really thought you were already spoken for then, ha! Ha! Ha! Well. Those were the days. But then you asked me about DeNgoz’ – wow; what kinda girl speaks about football, let alone DeMbare? Except my sisters, of course. Now, those girls are freer than independent Zimbabwe, I tell u. When they say fuck off, they mean fuck off – definitely not the no-means-yes type.
So here was some girl – not my sister – talking about Dynamos. It was bamboozling. And enthralling. I guess I was so engrossed knowing all the sides of you that I was gobsmacked to learn that it had happened to me. The it. Oh God, I had considered myself immune to such things. See, my roadmap was quite clear on the dos and don’ts at campus – drink daily; pass annually. No girls. Quite clear, isn’t it?
But then you happened. Oh you. How could I ever tell you; you already had a thousand pounds of premium quality stress on your head. First with him. Then with him. I must say this; you were quite in demand those days. Like a bitch in heat. Yea. You were so expensive you almost cost me a school report, you know.
Looking back now, I see the farce of it all. But, then, it was no laughing matter. I guess I was wise to keep my distance. Though I almost breached those principles that day when we lost to Kepekepe. Again. It was like a dagger in my ass. My heart. And my soul.
Even that other time when we found ourselves alone again with two beds in one room. The villas. As usual you were groping for the right words to lighten my grief for the Pop who had had his anatomy scalded by God knows what. In that novel vicinity of Riley’s life, we fretted about el Papa’s health – and we secretly wondered what accident was waiting to happen to us.
Because we all knew something was going on between us, a kind of vibe that sent the temperature in the room wild. We all felt it. So you suddenly felt like a bath; and I felt like I was outta here. Phew. Bullet dodged – but did we want to dodge it? Or what we really craved for was a fusion of other magic bullets that would take us to heaven and back?
So many questions, ma. So many questions. So many opportunities to be extremely wise or extremely stupid. I think we ended up being a little bit of both. When we finally came out of our shells and took the bull by the horns, it was already too late. I knew it wasn’t gonna work, and I think you came to pretty much the same conclusion yourself.
At times the questions just pop out – will I ever get to know what really transpired in that rainforest in Chirinda? What if I had asked the question? What if I had not fled that day when my hands refused to listen to me and kneaded their way all over yours? What if… questions, questions, questions.
But we pulled out quite fine in the end, methinks. We passed the test. Did we? I mean, look at you; all tucked up and taken. You look quite cosy. You are, right? Cosy, I mean.
And me. I’m still drifting, but enjoying the ride. I think I’m getting there, however slowly. It’s a long road we travelled; good, for you are arriving. I mean I hope you are.
And today you have added another notch up your life. One year older. I heard women don’t wanna be told that they are getting old. But you are no ordinary woman. You are my friend. And my enemy. Yea. I love you. And I hate you.
It’s normal isn’t it?
Happy birthday.
P.S
People will always talk; but it is what's inside us that build us to be better people; and the people that believe in us. believe it or not, I believe in you...
Or that other year when you ruled that radio should become an eternal no-no, for its unredeemable sin of voting Dembo fourth on the ’94 charts. Number four! What abomination!
Simple decisions, made on the spur of the moment; of course you knew you were lying to yourself.
But there some precedents, whether made on the turn or after careful musing, that leave a permanent mark. Yea; they thought it was a joke when I just upped one day and realised that the slimy green leaf called okra sliding down my throat was just as bad for my masculine metabolism as a conscious gobsmacking gobbling of phlegm.
It’s not that I’m allergic to okra. Hell, no. I just loathe it – there are some things you just abhor, aren’t there? And I happen to hate okra; and the joke just turned fourteen now. You know what; I think I hate it more and more each year; more so now that I discovered mucus can be spurted from a whole lot more subtle places other than the only nasal passage.
There is one other chapter I swore never to visit again in my living daylights, even in my next life – and it is this page I’m writing now. The last time I closed this, I felt like a man putting a lid on his Golgotha, after a lifetime of murderous skulduggery. Writing something – anything – about you, even complementary or derogatory, was one thing I knew I simply could not afford; what with our love-hate relationship littered with love and hate.
So you can imagine my shock that I find myself chained on this chair before McIntosh’s Apple, selling my ass out as it is. Just like my cancer-surviving desperate housewife, Linnet Scavo discovered to her mortification that, in lieu of the cancer recurring, she was in fact gravida with a set of twins – again; just as she had raised her hand to knock on menopause’s portal. OMG; come on doc, are you sure it’s not the cancer?
But there I was staring at skeletons in a cabinet I had sealed a gazillion years ago. Thinking: I guess in the end, the circle traverses both its nadir and its zenith, and you find yourself back at the beginning. Only that I overshot the beginning and grinded to a halt somewhere in the middle.
But I was not thinking about the middle – I sort of careened past it on my way from the Midlands the other day (I wonder why I’m smiling – I hope it has nothing to do with the Midlands and the middle) and that encounter, cyclonic though it was, got me thinking about, well, the middle. Ah, the middle – whose grandiose experience had driven me into jotting an impulsive piece as I watched the rain lashing the windows of George’s bus (it wasn’t his actually; George worked, maybe still works, for the bus company).
It was good.
I always wake up during a wet dream. Lost in the labyrinthine Bermuda Triangle of Whatshername’s fig leaf, I blindly screw my way between her water and her earth, both big Johnny and lil’ Johnny getting hotter and hotter, more and more sclerotic as the legion of hopeful wannabe-the-next-Johnny-generation swim blindly in search of the XX antidote. Then it happens – out of the blue, just as big Johnny is about to retch his gusto, Presto! I’m up and wide awake, gleaming with saline sweat.
There goes Johnny’s beautiful night. Again.
Funny, you should think, that I talk of the big and little Jononos; because just the mention of that name brings with it a deluge of memoirs about past Jononos. Jonono, the teacher, Jonono the friend, Jonono the enemy, Jonono the lover – or is it Jonono the wannabe lover? I ask because it was this confusion that led to a lot of pages like this suffering apocalyptic abortions.
I was angry; you pouted sullenly. I had a lot of reasons to be angry. You had a lot of reasons to sulk – and that slinging match at the PSC offices was just an inevitable eruption of ash and cinder – the Krakatoan cesspools of our fucked up brains spewing the long overdue lava that was a culmination of our drawn out seismic relationship.
That Jonono guy; he set us apart – and brought us together. He was our source of conflict and our source of unity. Our love and hate. You loved and hated him; I floated somewhere between love and hate – you could call it indifference – all the time wondering what it was that sent you rushing back to his office, possibly into his scrawny, tiny, emaciated ebony arms, when you were telling me a different story.
Believe me; I so badly wanted to believe your tears when you wept and told me how his premiership abducted you and imprisoned you in that New Media office of his. Fuck. I could murder his kidnapping ass. Then the Chaletgate Scandal broke out. Oh my God. Even now, four fucking years later, I can feel the bile rising inside me like mercury on a hot day in the Sahara. Fuck. I could murder your lying ass.
I looked at you and for a brief moment, I had visions of the gullible Samson and his deceptive Delilah. Listening to you singing to me a tired, heart-rending rendition of Britney Spears’ ‘I was born to make you happy’, something broke in me and the acidic lava I had held at bay all these years burst the shell of my crumpling skull, and I stopped caring. Just like that. Stopped caring about what happened to you or to me for that matter. I think I did make it crystal clear that day at the office in the presence of the poor one (who the hell names their child Karombo? I suspect he comes from UMP – Uzumba Maramba Pfungwa – because that is exactly where the Dump O’Stupidos of our beloved nation originate from).
“What the fuck do I care about what happened between you and the fucking Ahoy Union Premier at those chalets! Why should I even wanna know that?”
I even cemented my disengagement from you in verse.
Hello femme fatale
Femme fatale?
Yea; that you must be
La belle sans merci; you are
Everything I said about you, please forget
Then, I was crushin’
Now, I’m flyin’
I’m awake now
Less’n less of you i think now
And not good too...
But the wheel of fortune kept turning and turning, and soon it was back where it started – and that was when I realised that I’d been lying to myself all along. I did care KP (yea, that’s what I call you – but you’re never gonna know that). That’s why I got that much pissed. Yea, it is drunk I know. They were right when they said there was a very thin line between love and hate.
And I once did love you. I still do, but… it’s kinda different now. Back then, I…loved you. I mean I loved you loved you; you know?
Ever since those first days at the Poltech when you would bring the very short jacket and the very long skirts to class. I really thought you were already spoken for then, ha! Ha! Ha! Well. Those were the days. But then you asked me about DeNgoz’ – wow; what kinda girl speaks about football, let alone DeMbare? Except my sisters, of course. Now, those girls are freer than independent Zimbabwe, I tell u. When they say fuck off, they mean fuck off – definitely not the no-means-yes type.
So here was some girl – not my sister – talking about Dynamos. It was bamboozling. And enthralling. I guess I was so engrossed knowing all the sides of you that I was gobsmacked to learn that it had happened to me. The it. Oh God, I had considered myself immune to such things. See, my roadmap was quite clear on the dos and don’ts at campus – drink daily; pass annually. No girls. Quite clear, isn’t it?
But then you happened. Oh you. How could I ever tell you; you already had a thousand pounds of premium quality stress on your head. First with him. Then with him. I must say this; you were quite in demand those days. Like a bitch in heat. Yea. You were so expensive you almost cost me a school report, you know.
Looking back now, I see the farce of it all. But, then, it was no laughing matter. I guess I was wise to keep my distance. Though I almost breached those principles that day when we lost to Kepekepe. Again. It was like a dagger in my ass. My heart. And my soul.
Even that other time when we found ourselves alone again with two beds in one room. The villas. As usual you were groping for the right words to lighten my grief for the Pop who had had his anatomy scalded by God knows what. In that novel vicinity of Riley’s life, we fretted about el Papa’s health – and we secretly wondered what accident was waiting to happen to us.
Because we all knew something was going on between us, a kind of vibe that sent the temperature in the room wild. We all felt it. So you suddenly felt like a bath; and I felt like I was outta here. Phew. Bullet dodged – but did we want to dodge it? Or what we really craved for was a fusion of other magic bullets that would take us to heaven and back?
So many questions, ma. So many questions. So many opportunities to be extremely wise or extremely stupid. I think we ended up being a little bit of both. When we finally came out of our shells and took the bull by the horns, it was already too late. I knew it wasn’t gonna work, and I think you came to pretty much the same conclusion yourself.
At times the questions just pop out – will I ever get to know what really transpired in that rainforest in Chirinda? What if I had asked the question? What if I had not fled that day when my hands refused to listen to me and kneaded their way all over yours? What if… questions, questions, questions.
But we pulled out quite fine in the end, methinks. We passed the test. Did we? I mean, look at you; all tucked up and taken. You look quite cosy. You are, right? Cosy, I mean.
And me. I’m still drifting, but enjoying the ride. I think I’m getting there, however slowly. It’s a long road we travelled; good, for you are arriving. I mean I hope you are.
And today you have added another notch up your life. One year older. I heard women don’t wanna be told that they are getting old. But you are no ordinary woman. You are my friend. And my enemy. Yea. I love you. And I hate you.
It’s normal isn’t it?
Happy birthday.
P.S
People will always talk; but it is what's inside us that build us to be better people; and the people that believe in us. believe it or not, I believe in you...
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