The Place Called Loss

www.daviduzochukwu.com

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May 7th 2017

The sky was dusty brown, with the sun pulling itself away from it, there were the birds forming intricate patterns around the cloud rows. There was the evening wind blowing through, stronger than usual, taking up so much dust with it. I sat with her on the wooden bench by the bus stop, as legs moved a little faster, and the road side peddlers, screamed out their goods quite eagerly. All the words I tried to form stayed stuck in my mouth, I was in a conflict with the thoughts racing through my head and the impending reality, knowing my statements would do very little, and that perhaps I should have been forthcoming a long time ago. She looked my way eventually, and I saw the tears run down her cheeks, her oval face, and pointed nose, still somehow complemented her tears, and even within all the pain I knew she felt, I could not help but notice how beautiful she looked.

“So this is it, this is where we end now, Dumebi, is this everything?”.

I looked at her hands, unable to keep looking into her face, her dragon tattoo stared at me, a little fiercely that evening, like it was upset as well. The winds were stronger now, and the sky was beginning to darken, and I knew the rains were going to pour soon.

“I do not know what to say Halima, I love you, and I wish you could stay”.

“This was always my fucking plan, you had a part in it, we talked about this shit countless times".

She reached for her purse, and struggled to unzip it for a few seconds, eventually, it opened up, and with her palms shaking she dipped in, and pulled out a blunt. She also got out a lighter, and with the blunt hanging between her lips, she lit it, took deep drags, mindless to the eyes that looked her way, she let the smoke out, before looking in my direction once more.

“Dumebi, you are ruining everything, everything, everything…” She repeated her words, with her eyes staring into space, seeing through the curls of smoke.

“It has never been my intention to hurt you, or make you cry, I have never wanted pain for you, for real “.

I was beginning to find my words, I knew her, I knew in between her smoking, she was usually in better control. She looked in my direction now, without saying a thing.

“I know you have to go, and I you know I have to stay here as well, I really hope you understand”.

I saw that she had a smile on her face.

“Fuck you”.

And in a split second, she had more tears in her eyes.

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Carmel Uwase | www.daviduzochukwu.com

August 5th 2016

We kissed hard that night, with our hands searching wildly, and groping in the dark, we kept at it all night, and for the first time in a long while, I felt like something could satisfy me. We had a long conversation afterwards, unravelling, discovering, trying to understand how we possibly had so many similarities. We talked about things I couldn’t possibly discuss with anyone else.

“You know I feel the same way”. I said

“Same way about what, you have me confused”.

“I feel content even after releasing”.

She laughed hysterically at that point, rolling off the bed to the floor, but when she saw I was being serious with what I had said, she came right back up.

“I’ve always felt a detachment after sex, a displacement of some sort, like a reduction in my feelings for that person".

“So you’ve always felt less after sex, with people you thought you had deep feelings for?”.

“Yes, perhaps it has to do with expectations”.

“In what way Dumebi?”.

“In the past, I have had to define things before experiencing and to put forms to things without a clue of what it might be, basically, most ladies want to be assured before intimacy, which stiffens the experience”.

Halima covered her body with the duvet we had since abandoned, my admission had somehow made her suddenly aware of our recklessness, and how we were experiencing without asking too many questions.

“Well, I could be on the losing end of the table, maybe the ladies that seek these assurances are the wise ones”.

“The process to feel is where the journey is, the discovery is where the experiences are formed, if I assume or pretend to feel before the journey begins, then its doomed already”.

“We shall see how this one goes”.

“Yes, we shall”.

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April 23th 2016

The music was at its loudest, with the lights dim, so that I could barely make out faces. Earlier I had danced so hard, and drank a lot as well, my eyes were spinning, and I knew I had to seat for a while. So I staggered towards the bar, and did enough to climb a seat, just then I heard someone laugh. She had on a red velvet dress, the type that was slender at the top, with a robust end that made her look like a princess. Her face was oval, and even with the poor lighting, I could see that she had very brown eyes, that looked like it was used to undressing whoever it looked at, and was always critical, always examining. Her cigarette stick burned slowly, while she sipped cognac from a cup that she had placed on the bar stand.

“Isn’t it rather irresponsible to drink till you can’t climb a fucking chair eh?”.

I was immediately stunned by her directness, her rawness, which I found rather disturbing at that time. She locked her eyes on mine, and with her unwavering gaze, accessed, all the way from my head to my feet.

“Are you always this vulgar?”.

“What the fuck does that even mean, you get my point, you know what I mean, how I say it should not be a problem now”.

“Okay, I am pretty wasted and it’s a bad time to be arguing, I can barely feel my face, fuck”.

“Isn’t that a swear word as well Mr. man?”.

We laughed at that point, I saw how her eyes grew smaller when she laughed, and the dimples on her cheeks that were always in a hurry to reveal themselves. She had no make up on, which was surprising considering we were in a club, with most of the ladies wearing serious layers of cosmetic.

“Nice, so you stepped out looking natural, I see that you have no make up on”

“I use that at times, but I feel I have to be in my true form, to feel good in my skin, so I always try to step out without any extras now and then”.

“you believe cosmetics play a role with self esteem?’.

“Inadequacies always lead to seeking alternatives, people believe they are lacking, incomplete, and that is why it becomes difficult to self appreciate without any of the extras on, the desperate need to be enhanced, to all be like Marilyn Monroe”.

“I think I get what you mean”.

“Yes, I know you do. And the thing is, being incomplete is the best way to be, it comes with a lot of confidence and satisfaction, because nobody ever gets complete, life doesn’t come with that, we can search and lose so much, break and hurt, go all the way backwards, insecure, weak because of the need to be more, fuck that?”.

“The music is too loud; do you think we can perhaps go somewhere else?”.

She looked away from me, lit up another cigarette, took slow drags, like she was trying to absorb every bit of it, and then she slowly tapped the burning end of the stick on the bar stand, even though there was an ash tray to her left.

“What do you have in mind?”.

“We could go outside, should be better there, maybe take a walk”.

“How about we go to your house?”.

“My house, ehm.”.

“Do you live with your parents, you asked for us to go somewhere else, I see it as a move to a different situation, wouldn’t your house be the eventual outcome?”.

“I guess you are right”.

“Well, I am”

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May 7th 2017

The rain was now dropping, sending chills down my spine. Somehow, I wished it was a photograph, a paused moment, for my constant recollection, and that it would not pass away. Halima kept smoking in the rain, I saw her check her phone to see when the cab she had ordered would arrive. The wooden bench had taken up drops of rain, and I felt some of it sip into my trousers. I knew it was all imminent now, the cab was going to arrive, and she was going to go very far away, while I would remain in Abuja. She had always talked about her modelling career, and all the agents that she had paid to get her reliable deals, and how she did not want to do anything else with her life, according to her that was her purpose, she had it all planned out. It was always far fetched in my mind, a bit wishful, and the moments with her had me selfishly wish it would not get to that point. I remember the afternoon the modelling contract came in from Lagos, I saw how she carefully examined the offer, and her eventual dissatisfaction at it.

“This people are mad, they want me to walk runways for them, at a fixed amount, regardless of how many fashion shows come up, this is slavery, this is evil”.

The next afternoon, when I stopped by to see her, I saw the contract papers outside the gate, dusty and squeezed up. We never talked about it, I never brought it up, but that was the day I knew it was coming. She was a perfect model after all, with the right amount of everything, her legs were set straight with very tender calves to go with them, her every steps were for the runway, she elegantly placed her legs in cross directions when she walked, like everyday was a show, a job that she had to take care of. Her breasts were perky, and sat very comfortably on her chest, she knew they looked good, she was always reminded of it by all the stares and side comments she received. When we took walks in the evenings, I felt my ego expand so much, she heightened my masculinity, with her aura, her awareness of who she was, her convictions too. She always made the most complex arguments interesting, she would draw very abstract illustrations, talk about her family heritage, an incident that happened so many years ago, and somehow link it to the argument we were having, and it was usually an excellent buffer, and an interesting way to drive home a point.

She was without the drama stints I had experienced with women in the past, her anger was silent, a deep withdrawal from the scene, and when that happened, I knew I had perhaps done something wrong, or she just needed my attention in her own way. When she smoked a blunt, it was rhapsodic, she would laugh hard, cry harder, and dream even more. She was very different from anything I had experienced before, the only time she spoke Hausa was when we fucked, Halima would roll her eyes, bite her lips hard and mutter these incoherent words in her dialect, that in the strangest of ways made the moments feel numinous.

When eventually a fresh contract came in, with the big brown seal, and red stamps littered around it, I knew something big had come. Whoever had prepared it, had taken time to express their strong desire to get her to work with them, there was a formal address letter attached to the contract, with special promises and assurances, and it was also a Pan-African deal that was going to involve her travelling to several countries. It also came with a clause, she was allowed to come along with a dog, a boyfriend, or whatever was special to her. I found it insulting that they would list out a boyfriend, after a dog, side by side, like they were all the same, and used a leash, for her to drag around. We had a conversation that night, nothing like we had ever had before, for the first time I saw her get very upset, hitting the table. Screaming out words, and crying so much.

“You fucking said this was us, this was it, together, so why can’t you come?”.

“I did, but my career has never been this great, I just got promoted, I am an editor now, I have put in so much to get to this point, you know we can still be together regardless of the distance”.

“That’s just bullshit, you know how I work, I thrive through the day to day moments, simple but vivid, I need to see you, have you with me always, I need you. Besides you’d eventually be fucking a girl and dishing out stupid love words over the phone, I can’t do that”.

“Why do you think I would give up on you once you go, that’s very far from me. You know you can trust me, we can be successful with our careers and still be together”.

“We can’t, we have a choice to make, you can come with me, or stay here, without me”.

Now here we were, in the rain, with the choices long made. I decided to stay back, and she had to go. We spent the days before her departure together, fucking like we were trying to permanently absorb some of ourselves, the conversations got shorter, I guess we were both afraid of our words drifting to what was coming, the obvious reality we could not control. There was always a deep silence after sex, with our eyes mostly on each other, sharing words and thoughts, without saying them.

The rain was falling heavy now, I thought even nature was trying to make the moment doleful, as a reminder of the implications of Halima going away. The cabman soon came along, a heavily accented man, with very little patience. He screamed for her to get in, muttering words, and sounding disgruntled. She looked at me once more, with her eyes particularly red from all the tears and smoking.

“Take care of yourself Dumebi, I do not regret meeting you, we have made memories for a lifetime”.

“We sure have”.

We laughed to that, each of us picking our individual piece from the chunk of memories we had created. I pulled her close, and held her for a bit, with the rain dropping on us, and the horn from the cab blaring continuously, when she pulled away, she did not look my way, she turned towards the cab and ran to it, once she was in, the car pulled away, driving in the rain, getting smaller almost at once, so that it complemented the landscape, the swinging trees by the sides, the puddles on the road, the crickets stridulating. And then she was gone.

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