Marriage, baby, palava

I've been having a pretty good couple of days.  I haven't broke anything or anyone.  I've been nearly teetotal, in that my grey goose is now down to it's last shot and I'm hoarding it.  I miss those days when I could walk into Sainsbury's or Tesco and anonymously purchase vodka.  In West Africa, it isn't culturally appropriate for a girl to be buying alcohol by her lonesome (and I don't have the excuse of being mixed race or white or brown or yellow).  Hence, I've been putting off replenishing my stock.  Sigh, sad I know.

Lately, I have been receiving constant reminders that I am no longer a spring chicken.  I have cooed over enough newborns and not so newborns.  Some of these kids are turning 2 or 3 years old! People are having 5th year wedding anniversaries left, right and center.  My friends make awfully cute kids, it must be said so as much as I yapper on, meh, I love them.

Oh, and have I mentioned that everyone and their grandma is planning my imaginary wedding.  I was never one of those girls who dreamed about their wedding day and planned every aspect of it. I do remember drawing the floor plans of my Grecian style home +/- kids.  Said house has gradually morphed into an Edwardian/ Victorian town house with a gorgeous library and sun room.  Anything with large sash windows... I digress.  My response now to the traditional, ' We are waiting for our invitation oh!' is a smile.  I previously would retort, 'I'll let you know when I know'.

Recantata

So, a few months passed and in my desperation I had figured that there was absolutely no hope for me on this boat and it’s not like I’ve been proved wrong.  There I was minding my own business in my own house and feeling generally morose about the direction of things when along comes the ‘game changer’.  An utterly unexpected spirit.  You have had the benefit of understanding the context of my present predicament, considering, aforementioned gentlemen so, you can understand my complete surprise when an actual, personable, human being fell into my life and remained there for a month!  It is almost remiss of me to mention that he is/ was beautiful, inside and out.  Sensitive without being weak, sexy without being leery, funny without being coarse and friendly without crossing lines.  You are waiting for the penny to drop so let me throw it at you, he’s not gay… he’s in a relationship.  Yes, it was too good to be true.  The first black guy I fall for in 8 years.  Anyway, we had countless lunches, dinners, gone to the movies.  The first movie was horrific in content and seeing as we are movie buffs, we entertained ourselves by re-writing the plot scene by scene. Never was a scriptless movie more enjoyable. I go into this much detail for a reason; I promise.  Yes, so back to the breakfasts and lunches.  We talked, good, heaven we talked.  It was like the first time I had really talked in a year!  We’re on the same wavelength when it comes to art, diversity of music tastes, movies, books, religion, sigh I could gush on and bore you.  He broke me.  I had genuinely given up on meeting anyone that honest of the male persuasion in this country.  It was just honest.  And then I met his girlfriend, and she is lovely (obviously) and I wish him all the best.  He has left the continent now; too, I have lost another one to the Americas.

Interspersed within all this fun was an insignificant entity.  He makes this list because I met him at just around the same time as the game changer and they could not be more different.  We met at a mutual friend’s birthday drinks and he was the perfect gentleman in assisting me to prevent a vertiginous disaster each time I arose.  So I thought to myself,  ‘heigh , ho!’ .  Due to a distinct lack of diversity in the male gene pool here and an overabundance of girls who are willing to ignore certain things about these guys (note:  I am probably too picky), he is of the sort never to be in lack of female attention.  He could be considered fairly attractive, so warily I decided that being a friend to him wouldn’t hurt anyone.  He nearly ruined a favorite movie for me by being unbelievably negative.  Coming from me, that is an achievement.  And on a night when I needed a bit of an ego boost he committed the cardinal sin I find grossly distasteful.  He asked if my friend who was visiting was single.  Ps.  He had been flirting with me all evening in a light-hearted sort of way.  You know what? Maybe I over-reacted.  He’s single, she’s pretty (and not single); I’ll tell her he asked.

Setting the Scene

It’s not like since him I haven’t been attracted to other people.  Oh no.  I have been attracted to a few people.  There was the ADHD riddled, Jewish, swimmer who made me laugh, made me feel safe and gives the best hugs.  He distracted the crap out of me and as soon as I realized that every attempt I made to study with him (+/- his shirt) was a complete disaster, I exorcised him from my life.  There was the Eton bred, unbelievable conversationist whom I convinced to get back with his girlfriend.  As a psychiatrist if I charged per hour for our sessions, I would have been able to afford all those dresses I ignored as a medical student.  Seriously, we had a four-hour daily commute on the northern line, and then the Piccadilly line and if you didn’t know any better (and a lot of people didn’t…) you would have thought we were an item.  But no, I was just the Band-Aid.  I refrained from touching him in any capacity.  Did I mention he is now engaged to aforementioned lady?  Well, the date is set.   

I leave an entire paragraph free for a breed of boy that I had never before I left Mr Continental Drift.  I like to call them the NCBs aka Nice Christian Boys.  If you have ever been ensnared by one of these well-meaning creatures, you may have experienced full on Nice Christian Boy Syndrome, or NCBS for short.  With non-Christian boys, it is clear when flirting is flirting and when it isn’t.   They are in a word, intoxicating.  You know how girls complain that the guy was shallow, there was nothing in his eyes but lust etc.  These guys are lit with a fire that is super natural.  They quite literally have God on their side.  It doesn’t even matter if they are hot (in the traditional sense) or just good-looking or whatever.  They are presentable, polite and passionate about God.  If you don’t know what I am talking about, you really don’t know what you are missing.  Now, the problem with the NCBs is that an unsuspecting girl could get carried away and may have fashioned a whole grand romance in her head about her relationship with one of these chaps when in reality they are just. Being. Nice.   I learnt the hard way, and maybe I lost my way afterwards, then I learned and stopped paying attention to them altogether.  Maybe that is why my girlfriends all pretty much settled down and I ended up with a closet full of wedding outfits. 

It’s amazing how 8 years can fly by like that because I am now back where I started and alone.  I make friends, and they leave or I leave.  I am planning another grand escape to an even further continent than before and if I do, what will happen to my singledom?  Will I meet my fella and be forced to stay (she says smiling) or will I make more friends, yay! And be forced to leave again before I know what I am doing?  The latter is highly likely albeit not inevitable.  Give the girl a chance.

I left out a fairly prominent character in the debacle thus far.  The long timer, or as I like to call him, my American.  We have known of each other since I daresay conception… and have been circling each other and avoiding doing anything crazy our entire lives.  There was one year when I threw caution to the wind entirely and kissed him, repeatedly which he ruined by attempting to get ‘fresh’.  That was a bad idea because if I remove that incident from our history then I could at least say that I handled the entire affair well.  He is short, and he is short sighted like I am and although these are not no-nos are far as I am concerned, I like seeing whether he has grown up every time I say this to him.  He used to defend it outrageously before but now I don’t know.  I haven’t seen him since I showed him my favorite place in the world and he managed to complain the entire time as well as attempt getting ‘fresh’.  I was genuinely holding out an olive branch and he was being American.  My knowledge of men other than gay men is very limited.  I am what is considered a ‘good’ girl, ahem, and as such I can’t read him too well.  Lets just say that after that and other instances where he burnt olive branches, I have laid him to rest.  As a matter of fact he isn’t even a friend on Facebook.  When I am literary and prominent, he can find out through his brother (a friend on Facebook) how I am if he’s interested.  Dear gentlemen, if he had been even the tiniest bit romantic I may view him in a better light, I mean he got a free tour of the Southbank at dusk… that is my signature move!

Minim 2

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A few years later, after I had reformed and he had found his sexual prowess as a black, well learned, charming, distracted, metrosexual, fashion loving, whore from New York he came a - visiting.  My housemates proceeded to fall in love with him instantly (including the Gay best friend).  I don’t know how things are in the big apple, but in Blighty if you visit someone who is giving you free food and board in a house share, you bring gifts.  Flowers, a sleeping bag, massages, etc are all solid legal tender.  Under slept and frustrated I was glad to see the back of him.  We will always be friends.

Where we are now or, A bit of background

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It could be a sunny day outside today but quite frankly it’s muggy and has been raining for two days solid.  So it’s balmy and unnaturally warm, the sort of hot when you wear a low-ish cut tee shirt and stop feeling guilty about it the minute you step out of air conditioning.   There are those who get very excited about being in Africa, (West by the way) not the more fashionable east or very western south, I am in between continents you see.  So you find me in a car in a middle sized African city being driven to see someone who is in the same line of work as I am but who is older, wiser and much better traveled.  One of those scions of knowledge, worldly and otherwise who still managed to have four well-balanced progeny in spite of her general amaziness.  And all strong willed women, I’ll have you know.

‘I am still getting used to being here’, she says with big welcoming arms, ‘I arrived three days ago and I have been trying to get my electricity reconnected. She has warm eyes , grandma wrinkles in the right places and the sort of pale skin where you know her grandfather and or mother may have been Portuguese, Dutch or maybe even English.   My cousins are of a similar hue.  Anyway, I immediately notice her season one Downton Abbey boxset and wall of books.  I immediately feel at home.

I need to stop sensoring myself when I write and just write what I am thinking.  I am getting very rested at the moment and watching a lot of girly television.  As such, I have had time to muse on a few things.  Feel sorry for myself appropriately.  So I have come to some conclusions.  One, I am twenty six years old and I am unhappy.  Not deeply unhappy, no…. not depressed unhappy, no sir.  Not so unhappy that I am unable to function at work or in social scenarios.  Maybe that means that I am not so much unhappy as dissatisfied with where I am and what I am doing and how I am.  I just did the math and I realized that I haven’t been in a relationship in 8 years.  Then I was told it was a bad idea and good girls didn’t get into trouble with boys.  Good girls concentrated on the future and all it had to offer.  It was a fun and clandestine time I admit.  I had just returned from been surrounded by very posh, very tall, very white boys and had to ease myself into being attracted to gentlemen of my own ilk. 

 He made it easy.  He was a pest.  I was peacefully minding my own business but he insisted on talking to me at the most in opportune times.  I can keep a secret, my dears.  I can keep a secret.  I reckon I was initially asexual to aforementioned chap and listened and kept secrets about his girlfriend and other scrapes he may have gotten himself into.  I remember not owning a mobile phone but somehow racking up a lot of hours of received calls. Mostly entirely innocent.  For I am a good listener; and taking a year out to ‘travel’ etc.  in truth, the year was to plug the gap between being seventeen and being eighteen before medical school.  So as I was saying, we became slowly inseparable.  If a new coffee shop opened, we just had to go, we saw the same shows, he liked drawing comics, and I liked reading them.  I hid my growing attraction to him under sarcasm and wit, never being one to take what I want with both hands.  His girlfriend I remember was an interesting number, I don’t think we ever really spoke to each other.  She was taller, fairer, had much larger frontal appendages and in all honesty oozed the sort of raw sex appeal that meant that she never lacked suitors.  He led me to believe that theirs was a mutual understanding that was physical and not much else.  I hummed and nodded in acquiescence.   Their love affair ended after some rumors of cheating I think, and with that came the obligatory hand holding and cheering up. 

  I may have forgotten to mentioned that he popped by on his way home from an internship he did a couple of blocks from my house on a near daily basis.  And with mother at her new job… the coast was clear.  So on one of these days when I was tinkling at the piano he hovered a little close, and I ignored him.  Then he insisted on playing chopsticks and I feigned amazement (to anyone who has had piano lessons from the age of 3, chopsticks is the equivalent of white noise).  I abandoned the piano and decided to make myself comfortable on the couch.  I can’t remember what we were talking about on that couch but he decided that chat could not say what needed to be said and kissed me.  Curiosity made me give it another go, and then another.  Then it occurred to me that I knew all his bad habits when it came to girls and I stopped abruptly and led him to the balcony for a clarification of things.  He admitted to feeling very strongly about me but not thinking it was reciprocated.  I simply demanded monogamy of words and body, and once he agreed to that I agreed to see how things go.   I added a secrecy clause when I realized that my mother would not let him come to the house if she knew that I couldn’t keep my hands off him.  Our affair was halted by continental drift.  In the divorce he got the Americas and I got Europe.  T’was a fair settlement