Wole,
I’m sorry I didn’t get back to you immediately after the counseling session. A follow up was necessary. Do you still remember the story I told you during the counseling? And do you still remember I told you I wrote the whole incidence in my diary and that I’d email it to you? Well this is the excerpt from my diary. I hope you find it useful.
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The night turned to day and then it was night again, today’s night, so much like the others. A hazy feeling of shame lurked my mind. The same usual feeling. Will it continue like all the other nights? I was still laid on the bed, my fingers pulling through the short hairs on my head, hot tears rolling down my face, sniffing back the phlegm that was running down my nose. I had given up all I spent eighteen years building. Eighteen fruitful years of my life had come crashing just like that, in a night, five nights ago.
It had always been my tradition to keep bad company at arm’s length. I still hear daddy’s voice very clearly, when he’d quote the bible and say, “bad company corrupts good manners’’. He had also taken time, so much time to sit me down and talk to me before I left for the university. He had warned me to avoid bad boys and girls, and had always promised to support me and make sure I lack nothing. This promise he kept even till now.
As I wriggle on the bed even now, I am so much filled with shame and dismay. The memories of last Friday refrain from leaving my mind. I still see Joke, lying beside me with nothing but my black polo covering her body. The smiles, the red lips, the made-up face I now find scary, the long nails. Why didn’t I see all these all along? Why didn’t I see what they symbolised? I probably was blinded by lust. In a moment, I had lost consciousness and forgotten everything I knew, my identity as a child of God, my background, my eighteen years of sweet fellowship with God, my life.
It started on a Sunday morning at church. The brightly fair slender lady, who led praise and worship that Sunday, was not the usual girl we were accustomed to every Sunday. Hers was a peculiar style of singing. The way she blended her Yoruba accent into her high pitched soprano voice was dazzling. I knew there was something more to her. At least at the moment I was content with the fact that she was beautiful and a good singer with a mellifluous voice. Those were dazzling and unusual qualities.
After service that Sunday, I had proceeded to go and shake hands with her and of course tell her how wonderful her voice was. She called me by name to my amazement, and told me my department. In fact she called the names of two of my classmates. We got along well and it seemed we were friends even before we met. I think I walked her back to her hostel that day.
Joke was determined to be my friend because I remember, after that Sunday I never really made efforts at keeping the friendship, but she did. She was the one who saw me later that week at the bible study and requested for my phone number. She was the one who called every night to say good bye to a “just a special friend”, it was she who remembered that last Friday, was Val’s day, and all of those things. Of course, I’m not blaming her, not at all. It was she who introduced the goodbye hugs. And it was I who saw nothing wrong in any of these. Let me take my own portion of the blame.
Last Friday, the Val’s day, Joke insisted she’d come visit me in my room. To me, it was okay, after all we were friends, from church, and we’ve been friends for some time. And it’s okay, come on, what are friends for? So I cleaned my room, laid a cleaner bedspread on the bed (the very one I’ve now stained with tears and mucous), got drinks in the fridge and made everywhere comfortable.
The Joke of Friday evening was not the Joke I’ve known. She wore a black gown, heavy make-ups, long nails, and….and yes, the gown was very tight and cleavage revealing. I didn’t seem to hate that. So I welcomed her, we spoke for long, laughed, stared at each other and exchanged smiles. Somewhere along the line, she pushed the window and the darkness was revealed into the room. The day had crept silently into the night and it was way into the night. Joke suddenly realised that she had to get back to her hostel, then she realised again that the hostels would be locked already, and then again she realised that the porter on duty that day was Mrs Ali. Of course, all of us who had female friends knew Mrs Ali. She was one of the porters in charge of Bello hostel. She was mean, rude and crude. All the boys who went for Belloship had once or twice encountered her. She was well known.
That night, Joke resorted to passing the night at my place, this was five nights ago.
As the night went on and we kept talking, Joke began to feel uneasy in her gown and demanded she needed to change, but to what?
“Ah, what’s there?” was the reply. “You can easily give me one of those your big polo shirts, or long sleeved shirt, as long as it’s big. But I prefer a polo shirt; I’d be freer in it. And then you can go out while I change. I won’t take long.”
The ease with which she sounded should have suggested to me that she was used to sleeping over at guys’ houses, but I wasn’t thinking. How else did she know that big polo shirts would do, and several other things. I gave her a black polo top and made for the door.
“You don’t even have to go if you don’t want to, let it not be that I’m asking you out of your room, making you uncomfortable. Lol.”
“You don’t mind if I stay?” I asked. “Seriously I don’t, is it not your house, I should be the one going out not you.” She replied. I went out all the same as soon as she started undressing.
A voice called out to me few minutes later telling me she was done. I went into the room to see her sitting on the bed thighs fully exposed. My body at this time had understood the full gist and was already reacting. The urge to resist Joke was not there. Perhaps I’d wanted it too. Like a lamb to the slaughter I went to the bed, so easily.
It is five days past now but I’ve not been myself since then. I’m crying and praying but it was real, it happened, it was not a dream. I had sex with Joke, five nights ago on this same bed. I fornicated.
The feelings of shame have not left me since then although I’m remorseful and have prayed for forgiveness. I’m writing and I’m crying because I know that things are not the same any more. For the Bible, I’ve become like a piece of bread. I’ve lost my life to nothingness in vain short-lived pleasure. I don’t know about Joke but she’s gone and I haven’t heard from her since Saturday morning when she left the house.
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Here is the truth about what really happened to me. That very Sunday when I first met Joke in the church, my heart began to lust after her. I’d thought everyone was holy, at least in church. But there was I, looking at a lady leading the worship and lusting after her. I think the real truth about it was the moment I began to look at porn pictures in Gbenga’s phone gallery. And then maybe those moments when I downloaded them myself, deleted and re-downloaded again. But somehow, it didn’t start in church, that Sunday.
So as time passed and I and Joke got to spend more time with each other, I’d always come back thinking over the hugs and then the words she said and wishing I really got more than the hugs. I was really giving the devil a foothold in my heart and in my life. Those days when every SMS she sent meant the whole world to me and I’d spend hours reading and rereading all built up momentum for that Friday night. No wonder it was so easy for me to give in.
So Wole, your story is not too different from mine and may the Lord help you to overcome like I’ve done. I am praying for you and will call you in due time. Remember you are now a new creation; old things have passed away even Vera.
Cheers!
Kunle.
Christ a poet 