"Real Fictions," A Short Story by Osagiede Best

"Real Fictions," A Short Story by Osagiede Best. Osagiede Best is a Teacher and Learner living in Lagos Island and soaked in the soul of the city.

REAL FICTIONS 

I knew I would turn you into poetry, that is you would only come to pass.

Tokys said to me, “I know you don't go out like that, ‘why I wanted us to come here. Which is

better, Arosun or here?”

I was loving to hate the movie on TV; the music had since swallowed the sounds from the TV

like a badly synced soundtrack. We were already halfway through the burning cannabis.

Fearless energy drink under the mini wooden stool by my legs. Tokys and his fellow mixologist,

a friend of his, were creaming Action Bitter with Predator energy drink—alcohol with caffeine.

Homo Sapiens with high spirits.

The advanced man drinking the big Guinness stout would have eyed his wristwatch again.

I told Tokys I had had my enough of outside, going to work, at work and before coming back;

inside was what I had not ventured.

How wrong I was, for I am always meeting my inside outside. I am glad I went out with him. I

would not be too glad though if I had paid the bill.

The first time I saw you... I swear it was the first I have seen your like. The first time I saw you,

Boyspice and Khaid's song came on. At the "if they call you ogbanje, I don't care, I don't care,

Mami wata ooo. I don't care ooo", you got to pouring your heart out; you picked a guy sitting

with a friend by the door, probably someone you know before, possibly a regular customer,

probably someone you have fucked before, and you poured your heart to him. You chorused your fantasy on him. You laughed as the guy said something; you playfully hit his chest and rested

your head on his chest.

I had not seen your face, I had not seen your figure in your big blue gown; the light was dim—a semi-bar planted in the sinful night.

I told Tokys that what was happening inside the bar had more action than the Korean movie on

the TV.

You soon went to talk to the gang of three men I could not see what they were drinking. I saw

your face. I loved you first and later I loved your smile especially when it was cultured on that

face. That face, like the cutest flower. I am sorry to use flowers to compare your allure.

Metaphors fail me in giving affects to the words ‘tender yet vibrant’. Those cheeks, what they

did to me when you smiled. What you did to me, I swear I cannot say. You are the most attractive

thing I have seen.

"Every time I come see you for my snack, I come see you for my drink. Naim I come tey know

say you be my true lover. In fact, baby, I wan tell you say I want make we be lovers." At least

this is what I heard Pawpaw saying as an audio cut from a movie, attached to the song. Then the

song arrived at its inevitable end and another climbed over it.

Tokys's friend called you; Tokys asked you how much he was paying. You stood there thinking; I

was sitting just inches from you. I stared at you without reserve. I was floored by the way your

neck folded like that of a baby born last week; I would love to see you rub powder on it in an

evening's by-the-yellow-flower-kissed lights; I, beside you, soaking in the red-swallowed,

senior-citizen-dusk rays and scent of talcum powder. All these specificities don't only creep

someone out but hint now on my innards I had adorned you with.

You said the money was torn. But nothing is wrong with it; it was Tokys who said this. Nothing is wrong with you, was what I said to myself. You said your Madam would not collect the torn cash; Tokys gave you another. I remember I said to myself: "She is stubborn, just perfect."

You went away to look for change. I swear I knew how it would feel to touch you. Restful

surrender.

You came again asking if we had two hundred naira. "I will give you five hundred naira change," you added.

Tokys said, no. I put a hand into my pocket and I still had two hundred. I gave it to you. You

stretched the five hundred note change at me, but I pointed to Tokys; you gave it to him.

You went to sit on a stack of plastic chairs, so high, I could not help but see you. You were

singing along to the song on the speakers' lips. I was not hearing what you were singing, but I

was listening to your open affair with what the song evoked. Scratch that. I was listening to your

beauty. You were truly a mami wata. Your beauty is from somewhere I would be an alien. Yet,

where I will finally be at home.

You seemed to already realise my interest in you. Our eyes met briefly when the moving green

light reached you. You set yourself there as if in the focus of the camera, there as if you offered

yourself to the gaze of my desire. You seemed to get a certain satisfaction from provoking my

longing. Your girlfriend came and sat on the chair below you, resting her back in between your open legs. As if she felt this scene setting up, this posing for the perspective, this seduction of the gaze, this... Long story short, all I wanted was to hold your face and bloom purple kisses on your cheeks.

I started to map what was not you: To the left, the stacked cartons of indomie noodles on the flat wood nailed to the wall; to your right, the shelf full of bitters, whisky, yoghurt and energy drinks.

I knew you would become poetry. At least, there in love, I could be in my own experience. But

now, in poetry, I am shamelessly pruning and fixing.

The man checking his watch had at last left— gone to find proximity with what had been calling him.

You entered from the door — I didn't know when you went out — then bent over with an arched

back, pegged your arms on a chair and rolled your waist rapidly to the playing song. I was

finished from this already.

The euphoria climbed the heads of your mates and they joined you to set themselves and tumble loose asses for us to see. I threw away my eyes; It was no private affair anymore.

I had tied another smoke, Tokys exclaiming at an actor on TV getting stabbed by a pointed metal

on the wall.

As soon as Tokys said we should start going, I unplugged my phone. We walked out. And I did

not look back.

At a point in this elaborate infatuation, I wished to see your feet. It has been a recurring motif of

my desire. I did not see it eventually but I fell rubbishly for you, regardless; I thought I must

have lost a fetish but I had only been introduced to the montage of motifs in my fantasy.

Is this what love is? It scares me; not the history of this motif, not the ability to see someone,

something that fits as a metaphor for the object-cause of desire, no matter how specific it is, and

not the passiveness of will in the system of desire, in deciding what it longs for, but the fear that maybe I was finally able to love. That I have been able to break through anxiety to reach love.

Maybe. Maybe. I am now able to speak. To speak as in to cast another instead of the primary. To

accept love and to give it. Nah... I have a lot to sort out before I am destined for such luxury.

I am sorry, darling, I did not see you at all. I wish I had truly met you. I had only used you to meet myself. Though this is what such relation is, it is too cliché not to bore me. And I can't

afford to spoil what you are (to me) with truth.

Where I waited for Tokys to buy his supper, a minibus and tricycle, like infantry arrows, tore

through space with torch heads. I sat by the woman selling any liquid that intoxicates; I was

thinking of how much the experience of seeing you still held affects due to novelty and the haste

I wanted to be alone. I thought I had passed this: turning frustrated desire into poetry. Turning

libido back into language.

Maybe we still have a shot at it. I doubt it. But maybe. Unlikely though, since nothing might be

left after the catharsis of this writing.

Writer 

Osagiede Best is a Teacher and Learner living in Lagos Island and soaked in the soul of the city and the never-stale concoction of memories. You can find his published article in Ajispeak, short story in Nnoko stories and The Muse, his play of the absurdist tradition in African Writer Magazine and his poems in Afrihill and Kalahari Review and African Urban Echoes, Griot Lounge Canada. He can be reached through Bestosagiede@gmail.com.