| I spent the night with the gate man. |
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| Written by Anne Oboho | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Monday, 04 August 2008 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Guys, I am soooryyyy!!!! I have not been in the square for a while. I had issues. My bosses loaded my plate with the stuff my colleagues refused to handle; I am not complaining though, not yet. The difference between the series I did and the book I am writing is that I can always leave my book and come back to it with spicier ingredients. And people don’t have to build expectations around me because of the book. The earlier article was fast making me take on an appearance I have assumed among the Nigerian readers of my Lipstick column. I became this huge sex bomb; people wanted to meet and take me to bed, men harassed me on the phone so much so that I had to take my pictures and phone numbers off the pages of the newspapers. People simply failed to separate me from my write ups. I became the one who taught men and women how to make love. At the end of the day people have so wet their appetites that when they finally come face to face with me, there is this huge feeling of disappointment. I have failed to live up to the images I have so effectively painted on paper. When reality catches up, they discover that I am actually very terrible in bed and I am so naïve that I do not know the first thing about making love and pleasing a man in bed. This week, I will still suspend the book. I want to tell you the story Joyce told me last week. When she finished telling me her story, she broke down and cried so hard I had to stop her by telling her that she had better made sure the guy she was weeping so hard for really loved her. I mean if a guy does not love you enough, there is really no point wasting your tears. You may as well enroll as a professional mourner and earn money for your tears. I have stopped believing in heart breaks. When you are like me, you should be reminded that each passing year draws you closer to old age and closer to the grave instead of away from them, at that point you stop thinking of heart breaks which is the stuff discussed among teenagers. What I do at my age is evaluation study on love. As a protective measure, I have attached a switch to my love flame, this way; I am able to switch the love off when it gives me stress. I also attach a balance to a guy’s claim of love; everyday, I am weighing the love to see if there are danger signals that will tell me that it is time to touch the switch on my love flame. Enough of me. Let me tell you Joyce’s story, unedited, in her own very words; “I had felt like seeing my boyfriend Preye, I had some news to share with him and lately he has been so effective at absorbing my news and shocking biography that I just loosened up and told him every thing. I have decided to make him my diary, since I am so bad at recall, I felt if I committed everything to Preye’s intelligent head, he will help me in future when I need to quickly remember something. So last week, I called Preye up, I needed both to talk to him and to share some warmth. I had some early morning appointment in the Lekki area of
I spent some thirty minutes at the bus stop before finally deciding to take a ride to the Ikeja bus stop, we spent another ten minutes before leaving to go to Obalende. The drive to Obalende was executed in less than twenty minutes; the road was so free, there was no traffic. From Obalende, we were warned that there was a broken down trailer along the Lekki expressway and the bus driver charged us extra for that reason. We did not buy the huge traffic story; we felt the driver just wanted to increase the fare. Twenty minutes into our trip to Lekki, the road closed up, we had to divert and take a presumed short cut along the sandy and lonely estate back roads, those routes were blocked as well, other drivers had also decided on those same routes. At the end of four hours, we finally emerged on a free road. By this time, it was a quarter to twelve. I called Preye before getting to the estate; his phone kept going into voice mail. I tried the alternative line; it was ringing without an answer. My one thought was, Preye has gone to sleep and when Preye goes to sleep, everything had better wait till morning. I got into the estate, still trying to get him on the phone. I did not know how to get to his house, all the houses looked identical and at that time of the night, it was very confusing. I started wandering towards where I thought his house might be, at this time I had called so much that my battery was running low. At one gate, I stopped when I saw the security man. I told him where Preye worked and the colour of his car. He pointed me to the next lane and I moved over until I discovered the houses there actually looked different from the one I felt should be preye’s house. I kept moving until I found myself where I had started from. The estate was gradually growing still with only occasional cars moving through the pools of water and splashing some on me. My legs were also peeling inside the court shoes I wore. I stopped at a wide gate and started talking to the gate man. I explained that I was lost and my friend was not answering his calls. I told him that I knew my friend had slept and it was not easy to get him to wake when he had done that. He was very understanding but I could see he looked like he was not totally buying my story. He asked me to keep trying the number as hotels in the area were very expensive. Then he advised me not to let any body know that I was stranded because the estate haboured high class ritual killers. My blood ran cold when he mentioned the fact that there may be ritual killers on the estate. I refused to move further ahead especially as I did not know where else to go. I begged him to open the gate for me so I can stay outside the grounds for the night. He told me that he could not do that because he would lose his job if his employers should see me. I promised him that I will be as invisible as possible and that they will never see me. I told him that I was a career woman and offered to even show him my identity card. Then I started sobbing, I was so scarred my whole body shook with the fear I felt. Finally, the man was touched enough to open the gate for me. He explained to me that his madam will collect the remote that controlled the gate as soon as she got in and I could not go out until she left for work in the morning. I told him I was okay with the arrangement. He took me into a guard house that was just the size of a four by five feet carton. I was shocked to see such a small guard house in such a grand estate. It was not wide enough for a man to sit and stretch his legs not to talk of attempting to lie down. I expressed my surprise audibly and the gate man told me that the rich people on the estate did not believe that their security men are supposed to lie down; they felt they are supposed to be up all night. I forgot about my own condition and started being angry at the hypocrisy of these rich people. How could a human allow a fellow human being like himself to stay in such a small cubicle? It was inhuman; I kept fuming and complaining to the security man. And the grounds of that house were so big; they just planted grasses and flowers everywhere. I felt so disgusted. The owner of the house occupied the whole upper and lower floors of the duplex alone with his wife. It was the height of man’s inhumanity to man. The guard told me there was a vacant boy’s quarter that was definitely out of bounds to the security men. The occupant of the house was a director of a bank; the complex was paid for by the bank. I had a mental image of these bankers who brush their teeth with pepsodent whenever they are getting set to smile at us and make us part with our money and yet had no human feeling enough to avail a security guard the use of the toilet in the boy’s quarters of his house. I sat hunched up in the carton shaped room, my knees drawn up to my chin. I remained like this as my tears continued to flow till morning. The guard could not share the room because it was so small, he had to wander the grounds till morning and he explained to me that he had problem with migraine which got worse whenever he could not get enough sleep. I could not even go outside to ease myself for fear of being seen by the owner of the house. At a point I was so pressed I had to wear the gate man’s overall and pretend to be the gate man before sneaking out to ease myself at the small gutter behind the guard house. I became worried for Preye’s safety. It was unusual for him to ignore his calls for so long. The gate man suggested he may have somebody else in the house and was ignoring me. I quickly dismissed that theory; I told him every other thing could happen except that. In the morning I called Preye and he informed me that his phone had been on vibration since afternoon when he put it that way during a meeting. The other line did not have service inside his house. I was relieved that he was alright. When I heard preye’s voice, I sobered up. I reflected on an action that put me at such risk because I needed to see Preye. He was understandably shocked that I had to pass the night in a guard house on his own estate.” At the end of the tale, I asked Joyce what she thought. “Do you love this guy? Yeah, very much, was her reply. “And are you convinced he shares the same affection towards you? “I had every reason to believe he did at first, but now, I am not so sure.. My life story could put out a giant fire. I wouldn’t blame him if his flame is somehow turning cold. “Then my dear, I told her, watch that flame very well and be sure to switch off your own the moment you discover the guy is off you. There is no point hanging around at that point”
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Posted by Robot| 04.08.2008 06:58