Whenever I tell my love story the reaction is that of doubt and this is because the place where I found love is unbelievable to everyone who hears me tell it. I myself find it hard to believe it perhaps because my one quest in life was to find true love after I left school and got a relatively good job. And only attained this desire for true love when I stopped looking and this was in as unlikely a place like a roadside beer parlour or joint as people prefer to call them these days. Everyone will agree that a beer parlour is not without drama that is why many a man of God will tell you to steer clear of such places. But beer parlours are a place of happiness, a place where you can download all the grieve that you bring with you and attain a high that is hard to find elsewhere.
Like a true church boy, I grew up to believe the saying that had been drummed into my head over the years that the good women and invariably wife material can be found in the churches or maybe even at work. But my experience was contrary to that. Take the case of Olamma, whom I grew up with on the university campus in Zaria and who everyone started regarding as my wife including our parents all of them detribalised Nigerian lecturers at the Ahmadu Bello University (ABU), Zaria. Nothing could have been more poignant that we would end up together but the years and time soon threw us far apart. As it turned out, we wanted different things. It was such that when I returned after my national youth service to Zaria after attending Bayero University, Kano for my first degree, I quickly started to wonder if Olamma was really the one for me.
All I wanted to do then was ship off to Lagos and begin the search for a job. I wasted no time in doing that. In Lagos I was exposed to all manner of women willing to do all manner of things for a young man with prospects. Olamma was soon only a distant memory in the little history that I had accumulated. Confirmation that this was indeed true came when a few years after I moved to Lagos my mum had told me in a phone conversation that my ‘wife’ had married someone else.
“My wife?” I had said realising before she clarified that she had been referring to Olamma.
“Olamma of course, you have failed to step forward so someone else has snatched her blessed heart,” she said. I am sure she had only been joking for she must have known that that road had long since closed.
In Lagos I travelled several roads including the one paved by Abolore. Strange when I look back at our time together and discover that she just wanted to experience someone who was coming from the north, far away from the rot of the Lagos city as she used to put it.
“I don’t want to get married,” was always her rallying cry. “Why do I want to be tied down to one man enh, Pam, when there are several others more handsome than you are?” She had once famously asked me. “But I have not asked you to marry me,” was my own glib retort to her. “One day you will and I will respond with a resounding no,” she said then.
I didn’t get a chance to ask either her or the many others that came along particularly after I got a dream job in one of the telecommunications companies that had moved in and made Nigeria a place for their business.
Part of the reason I could not keep a steady relationship was because of my highly stressful job. In five years I had been in a relationship with at least three women. But the one I truly regret to this day having to let go was Abolore. She is someone I would have loved to settle down with but I never got a chance to propose before she relocated to Canada. The stress of her departure including the fact that she had cut off communication with me and it had been painfully difficult to find someone who could make love to me the way she did led me to quaffing more bottles of beer than I would have loved to do. This was the time I started going to beer parlour. Another reason was to keep me from having dark thoughts that would have made me sink into depression. This was how I found my way into the arms of Jasmine. I only needed to see her for my whole being to deduce that it wanted to do wicked things to her. She too was running from the demons that chased her and the fish at this particular popular joint located at a sharp corner on the Lagos Island was a draw for her.
“Why are you looking at me like that,” were the very first words she said to me.
“I just want to devour you whole bones and all the same way you have the fish in the plate on your table, only I will have no need of spices,” I said. It was the drink talking. If you have ever had a few bottles yourself, you will know.
“Mister, let me remind you that we just met, where are your manners?” she said playfully.
“Most likely in your keeping. I sure want it back. Give it back,” I said too incoherent to make sense even to myself. She soon hailed an Uber and we were on the way to her pad on the Mainland in Gbagada. We were barely in the door when we discarded our clothes.
“Wait!” She said with urgency in her voice. “Have you heard of Tantra?”
“Are you talking about the Kama Sutra?” I asked.
“Not exactly,” she said. “Let me show you”.
She led me to her bedroom and bid me lie supine on her well-made bed which had colourful bed clothes. She then disappeared for a bit causing me to wonder what it was all about and whether coming to her place had all been a mistake. I was about to change my mind, grab my clothes and run when she returned with a little bowl filled with exotic oils and began to lightly massage me all over. After a while she bid me do the same. Believe me when I say that that night for the first time in my life I achieved orgasm without penetrative sex. And I liked it very much. It was then my turn to do the same for her. I start with her flat belly, which I lightly massage generously applying the oil she had earlier brought in a bowl. Then I moved up to her chest, breasts and down to her thighs, pubis, back of her legs, soles until I had massaged every part of her body. Doing this to her was as much a pleasure as I was giving her pleasure. What was more, her perfectly shaped body was a delight to behold. And she didn’t need the happy ending that she gave me to come to thunderous orgasm when I ended with caressing her nipples with my excited and oily hands. Just like that lovemaking, every other thing in our lives is as precise and perfect.
We had been at it for almost two years when I asked her to marry me and she said yes. The wedding is for December. Who would have thought that I would find such a perfect woman in a beer parlour.