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Those Lagos State University days were beautiful days of unending sunshine and sugared adventures. Those adventures would rattle your mind too if you were one of the mischievous young men of carefree dispositions. Among those young men of carefree dispositions were my friends Jumbo, Ade, Kenny, and me.
Jumbo, the oldest one of our group at his old age of twenty-one, had, at one time, three sugar mommies. We learned from him. He was the most daring, the smartest, and the most handsome of us all. In addition, he spoke, almost fluently, the three major languages of Nigeria.
Jumbo never told us his ethnic background. His real last name was so generic that he easily passed for a member of several ethnic groups. The rumor about him was that his parents, both of whom were federal government employees, had worked, on transfers, in just about every part of Nigeria and that he, a quick learner, had picked up the languages of the natives wherever his family was stationed. But this playboy had one serious adventure waiting for him, which I recall and re-tell today with fond memories.
It all started the last day of classes at the LASU Main Campus in Ojo, Lagos. An old raunchy, pot-bellied, Lebanese man had driven up to the gates as we were strolling out of the campus with our book bags.
By driving his sparkling Nissan Pathfinder, the high-class jeep of the time, the Lebanese man instantly secured for himself the undivided attention of the youthful crowd. Such attention was even more guaranteed if you factored in the presence of young male dreamers like us who were enamored of shiny rides.
The man, whom we later knew as Mr. K.T. Abbas, got out of the jeep, zeroed in directly at my friend Jumbo and, without ceremony, offered Jumbo a holiday job at his restaurant. His restaurant, a Lebanese cuisine, he told Jumbo, was off Adeola Hopewell Street in Victoria Island and he would provide Jumbo with temporary living quarters near the restaurant. It was not unusual for employers to offer holiday work to students and it was not a surprise to us for the man to have picked Jumbo who was, as I have already indicated, the most handsome of those of us who were in our late teens and early twenties. Jumbo, of course, accepted the offer.
Jumbo started work that same week at the Lebanese restaurant called NEW LEBANON CUISINE. K.T. Abbas provided him with free use of the companys pick-up truck in addition to a free room near the restaurant. His job description was special assistant to the general manager. Jumbo was happy and so were his friends Ade, Kenny, and me. Every evening, we all gathered at Jumbos little room for free food, free accommodation for meeting girlfriends, and to listen to Jumbos accounts of his latest sugar mommy adventure, which is this story. Jumbos sugar mommy problem began, exactly one week after he started work.
The rather sugarless problem for Jumbo was that the old General Manager of the restaurant, Doris, took an instant liking to Jumbo, took Jumbo to her home, just five blocks away from the restaurant, and demanded that he perform some intimate favors on her while she lay down on her bed, the light lowered, herself in the nude.
Now, it is true that in campus life at that time ownership of a girlfriend was a desirable thing for a young man; and it is truer that an older girlfriend on the side, a sugar mommy, was the nirvana of a poor young mans dreams. A sugar mommy who, just for one thing, and one thing only, gave you money, gifts, made you feel like a king among your friends, pushed up the limits of your young ego. Those ideal sugar mommies were the ones who did not mind that we had girlfriends of our own age; they did not demand to be seen in public with us; they were satisfied with our clandestine visits to their houses or other secret locations of their choosing. If you found yourself in those secret locations with your ideal sugar mommy, and she, by accident or design, ran into one of her girlfriends, she showed you off like a prize. You were a trophy, but you did not mind.
In spite of all these virtues of sugar mommy-ness, in spite of all the potential benefits to Jumbo, and to us who were Jumbos friends, of Jumbo hooking up with the sugared Doris, our happy holiday and expectations of free accommodations, free use of company vehicles, free food, and so on were seriously disturbed. Jumbo, the quintessential playboy, the handsome poster boy for gifted gigolos, was instantly immobilized by the experience. Are you still wondering why?
You may think that it should not be a problem that Doris, who, at forty-two years of age, was twice the age of Jumbo for, after all, such disparity in age is what sugar mommies are made of; you may also think that Doris being twice the weight of Jumbo at three hundred pounds, with thighs as huge as tree trunks, and breasts large enough to strangle a young man, should not be a problem for, after all, he was not expected to marry her but instead to exchange favors for favors. Yes, you may think that all these issues should not be a problem for Jumbo the playboy until I tell you that Doris was also the wife of the restaurant owner Mr. K.T. Abbas. Doris herself was also Lebanese.
Every Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday, at 10:30 p.m. when the restaurant closed for the night, Doris would ask Jumbo to drive her home. As soon as they got to the gate, she would insist that he come into the house, wait for her to take a bath, and come into the bedroom. Grudgingly, but dutifully, Jumbo, fully clothed, would perform expressly identified services on her while she lay naked on the bed in the dimly lit room. She instructed Jumbo never to remove his clothes. He would work, slowly, from her head to her thighs typically for twenty-five minutes. As soon as she reached a certain level of arousal, she would give him the order to leave: Please leave .. leave
leave now! Still fully clothed, Jumbo would run out of the house and go home.
The first time this happened, Jumbo had assigned the misadventure to fear on the part of Doris, a welcome change of heart, which he believed would stem further amorous overtures from her. Then it happened again, and again, and again. Finally, it became a routine. Not once was Jumbo allowed to remove his clothes. The sessions, he realized, were not for him but for her. But what exactly did Doris do after he had been ordered to leave? This question baffled Jumbo and us as we discussed it nightly. But, with our encouragement, Jumbo fully accepted the routine and the wonderful fringe benefits in the forms of expensive clothes, money, and a new car that came to Jumbo courtesy of the sugar mommy. The only unconquered fear now was the fear of being caught by the husband K.T. Abbas. We were cruising smoothly, and then Jumbo ruined the whole nirvana with male greed.
Yes, Jumbo ruined it. To this day, I have wondered the limitless heights that Jumbos fringe benefits would have taken him and us if he had kept to the script. But as a typical playboy, his curiosity and desire to add a personal intimacy with a Lebanese female to his pedigree led to his (and our) downfall.
That downfall began on a Saturday night, two months into the affair. Doris had given Jumbo instructions earlier, just before 9:00 p.m., to go home and take a bath and meet her at her house at 10:30 p.m. He knew the routine. He knew the unwritten contract. He knew the course of dealing from two months of prior performances. But Jumbo had begun to think with his manhood instead of his head. He went to see Doris in his new clothes, new underwear, wearing his expensive cologne, with one thing and one thing only in his mind.
Following his routine services on Doris, her elevation to a state of optimum arousal, and her final order for him to Please leave
leave
leave now Jumbo, fully aroused himself, and standing fully erect, quickly took off his clothes and jumped into the forbidden thing like a starved man
and Doris screamed at the top of her voice as Jumbo forced his way in
she called on her husband to come out from the closet.
Mr. K.T. Abbas, who had, all along, been the brain behind the supposedly secret rendezvous of Doris and Jumbo, was forced to jump out from his usual hiding place in the closet, the closet where he normally sat, for two months, and watched as Jumbo aroused his wife, the closet from where he would normally rush out to satisfy his fantasy with his wife by completing the act for her after Jumbo had been ordered to Please leave now by Doris. Now, because of the greed of Jumbo, because Jumbo could not control his manhood, the entire fantastic edifice collapsed!
K.T. Abbas pulled Jumbo off his wife and, Jumbo still naked, ran out from the back of the house as Abbas chased him off, with a blistering array of apparently Lebanese curses.
That night, with our help, Jumbo packed out of the free room and moved to a hotel for the night. He never went back but kept the gifts.
In September of that year, when classes resumed at LASU, Jumbo, Kenny, Ade, and I were carrying our books, strolling past the campus gate when we saw an old, raunchy Lebanese man at the school gate, sitting in a Nissan Pathfinder jeep and offering one student, a handsome twenty year old Calabar boy, a job at his restaurant

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Posted by Robot| 27.06.2008 18:53