“Hey, you want me to formally invite you first, right?
Nike turned her head away from my direction and continued walking towards the bathroom room……not like my eyes were focused on that part of her body anyway. Sure enough, she had nice eyes and her weave was properly fixed, but I was gazing at something else at that moment.
Nike’s butt cheeks bore that aura of perfection, and no, I wasn’t harbouring that opinion simply because I nibbled at it earlier on and watch the juices therefrom grace my jaws. There was that smoothness like none other, and now I was getting that full rear view, I could see how well formed it was. She had told me of her preference for walking around the house unclad, and I blessed the Lord for her fashion choices.
I looked to the table to the right side of this large bed where I was sprawled, totally unaware of where I had flung my briefs. On the table lay a copy of the book “Good Morning Holy Spirit”, but I loved to think that if those leaves had feelings, they would cringe upon feeling my touch, particularly considering where my fingers had been for the greater part of the past few hours. There was also a large frame on the wall containing a picture of Jesus and the twelve at the Last Supper, and while the photo didn’t bear the mystique of the Mona Lisa piece, I could feel Peter and John staring at me, frowning deeply. There would be no communion for me on the following Sunday for sure, unless her skin would serve as bread, and the liquid on my jaws be substituted for wine.
Her phone beeped. I checked out the Caller ID, which bore “Le Boo”. I knew better than to answer the call, so I let it ring and turned over the Infinix Hot Note. I was not about to reflect on the issue of fidelity in modern day (heterosexual) relationships. Then again, Nike had got the shower running, and as I slowly got up to join her at the other end of the door, I grinned as I recalled how different things were more than half a decade ago.
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“Oh God!! This flat sef? Who don use my water again?”
The year was 2010, I was chasing my university degree at the time, and I had rented an apartment away from the main campus, apparently being fed up of sharing hostel bathrooms with rats and having fellow occupants stealthily hijack pots from electric cookers midway through cooking half-decent cuisines. Each habitat had its own peculiarities though, and with this 50,000-a-year apartment, I was faced the burden of fetching water quickly before our landlord locked the tap and access to water would be denied until evening. The widow in the next compound would not hear of “strangers” coming to her water tank since we were not “paying rent to her”, so I was understandably livid at being deprived of a bath; there were mid-morning lectures to catch up on, never mind that a slumberfest was in store.
“It’s Charles. He and his girlfriend are bathing together, as usual”, my roommate said, in response to my inquiry.
I knew the girlfriend in question; Imade, a plus-sized lady who would get battered by Charles by 9am and still come over by 8pm to tickle his pubic hairs with her tongue. She cooked for him, did his laundry, helped him out when his bank account was malnourished, and on some occasions (as this one), scrubbed his body.
Beyond the fact that my hard-earned bucket of water had been the sacrificial lamb for their fantasies, I was a conservative student fellowship leader at the time, and I considered joint baths totally disgusting. I viewed it as a precourse to fornication, and I didn’t mince words in stating my opinion.
“Those ones will just be committing sin in there”, I said.
“Oh, Charles and his babe? That one is a regular thing now. Sorry about your water o, something had to give”, my roommate replied.
“But this neighbour really needs to give his life to Christ sha. I will talk to him one of these days”, I went on.
And in my righteous anger, I prayed for Charles’ conversion, while mulling over the length of time expended in that collaborative shower, and my impending lateness for lectures. I would go online and update my Facebook status thus, with the aid of my Nokia 2690:
“Ladies, just because you bathe with him is no guarantee that he’ll marry you. Please, repent!”
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All that felt like a lifetime ago. Nike was probably the eighth lady I would be taking a joint bath with, and there was nothing to indicate that she would be the last. I had long realized that people had various ways of expressing how they felt about one another, and that it was silly to judge others when one had not been faced with similar situations. My mind had become open to various perspectives over time, and I perfectly understood where Charles had been coming from years ago. I took one last look at the photo on the wall, and I turned the door knob so I could help Nike in her quest to conserve water.
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Jerry is a sports enthusiast and future art collector who lives in Lagos. Unofficial brand ambassador for small chops, he lives for some good literature with rock music seeping from the headphones. You can catch up on his thoughts at pensofchi.com