I am thinking of you
We are drinking beer in my thoughts. Opposite the mall. You are talking imperfect sentences and looking at my acne.
Infatuation, is the sitting across from each other, buttocks meet chair, and looking intently at the thing the other is trying to hide. A recognition of each other’s imperfect avocado ripening tenderness. The subsequent realization that, you don’t mind.
Opposite you, I am not trying to park my face in neat squares, crisp corners, shelf it away from view. Instead, in front of my eyes, are the hat you just took off. In my thoughts, you are bald. While you discuss potential unfulfilled and I argue about the merits of a gift shunned, your eyes say to me, acne vulgaris, and I reply, loss of hair. We both decide, we do not mind.
The only thing that causes you to avert your spirit is when you attempt to pay me a compliment. An unfortunate thing, that. Like a baby having the hiccups, and I want to say to you that I know what you mean but I wonder if that would be soothing. A piece of white thread on the infant’s head maybe. Sarcasm comes out instead. Then it is 1 AM and we are walking along Adeniji Jones. Of course you kiss me.
My understanding of Brymo is proof that sex has always been familiar to me. All of my understanding stems from fuck. Conclusions drawn, analogies given. With you the thing is strong. I turn around on another night and tell you, I want to fuck you. But you see, I have slept in your house, on your bed, worn your shirt and nothing else, twice, and laid no claim to your penis. Because?
Just now, I text you saying, I am thinking of you.
The beauty of your sentences. I am only vaguely aware of what they mean when they say a person is walking a tight rope, but that is it when I read you. The restraint I conjured as tightening jaws of Levi’s wearing cowboys in my JSS3 Mills and Boons-ing. Like a waterbed with no jiggles, Hydrogen, Hydrogen, Oxygen, too tightly packed underneath the plastic. Though not preventing the comfortable to lie-in-ness of said bed.
What I mean by all of this, is, the discipline. Deliberate. You remind me of reins. And I am in like with your pull. Infatuated by the self assurededness that sometimes turns into pride.
Finally, we fuck.
After, you say, I like you a lot.
I like you a lot. I like you a lot. I am not sure.
I like your mind. The conversations we have. I like how I sound when we talk. I like it when we walk. I like, and of this I am sure, your lack of hair. Matter has weight, it occupies space. A thing’s thingness is made apparent by the event of its absence. There is a space on your head. A presence of your hair’s absence. I like this absence’ presence. If all of this is you, then, yes, see, I did not lie, I like you.
It is nothing profound, and I will not drop like a thing let go of and sound loudly inside of my feelings for you, but, we will be thrown out of strip clubs, endure bad Rita Dominic acting, buy great books, and search for 50,000 naira + jackets, sorry I mean blazers. We will not find them. While searching instead, we will stumble, without intention, into Pasuma performing street of heaped food type wonder. And amidst all of this, even while with you, I will be thinking of you.
This is what I am proposing we do. If infatuation is the noticing of ashamed of things and not minding, an increment in liketitude, eventual progression to not quite that thing called love, requires the constant discovery of ashamed-of things. And if it be true, that, the longer we look, the little-er we see, constant thereness, therefore, impedes this progression.
Enter proposal; I will go missing like your hair. Not all at once, and not forever. Making re entries like that unnecessary last scene in Ojukokoro — hopefully not inducing a groan — and inside of the presence this absence will bring, will be heightened likeness spurned on by discoveries of new ashamed-of things.
