EAT, PRAY, LOVE

It all started when I realized I had counted all the walls in the house. I began to notice architectural defects that had never before been of any concern to me (I’m an Electrical Engineer, not an expert on building designs). But yes, I was noticing them, not because I had to OR wanted to. It just happened because my mind would wander and these things were like anchors so I don’t go spilling off and bringing harm to myself – to my mind.

I remember always brooding and the tears that would leave my eyes unprecedentedly. I was hardly happy; always putting on fake smiles so Mother doesn’t suspect the change in my countenance and start prodding.

What would I tell her? I mean, I wasn’t even fully sure what it was that got me feeling this way. Then again, I knew it was over reasons I’d rather die than let her find out about.

My love life was a mess. No, that’s mildly putting it.

I had no love life. It was a sad situation and especially devastating to me because I wanted to have one. You see, I’ve been with friends who are strong advocates of “Fuck love, fuck people, fuck it all.” I try sometimes to be like that, you know, by tapping into their strength or maybe just convincing myself that that’s the space I should be in.

Do you really need love?  I’d ask myself during a bout of contemplation.

Worse question still – Can you ever be in love?

I’m on a roll. Hold up.

This isn’t a write-up about my most body-crashing, teeth-gnashing moments. It should be a write-up about the NOW of my life, so I’m not going to dwell a lot on what was. It should be more on what is – should being the operating word.

A quick side note: I’ve never been heartbroken, even though I’ve been the reason for three different heartbreaks. So tell me why I should be depressed over not having a love life when truthfully, I’m the cause of my peril?

I could write on how it’s not actually my fault things happened the way they did with Emma, Nonso and Frank. I could tell you most sincerely that I did what I did for the good of us all involved. But does it take away the desolation they felt when I brought the news of the end to them at the times I did?

Karma.

I’ve always feared that word. I’ve always dreaded the personification of that wily bitch. And around September till early November last year, it was as though I was dining with her. I like to think she’s the cause of my problems. I just want to have something to blame other than myself, you know.

So what do you do when you’re depressed and there’s no one to talk to about it because you don’t even know what the problem in itself is and as such cannot accurately describe how you feel to that listening ear?

Some people resort to food. Some others throw themselves into work, and yet a lot more do random stuff like go to the gym, lock themselves in, play video games, go hiking, cook bizarre dishes just so something else is horrid and not just their lives.

Me? I resorted to sex.

Grindr became the go-to app. I’d log in daily and the combination of an attractive profile picture, a sensual profile name and come-hither profile update always made sure my message feed was packed.

I was a hoe and I was living it effortlessly.

Lagos afforded me the means – gay guys in different shades. I had the looks. I had the words. I had the privacy. And above all, I had the resolution.

The sex at first seemed therapeutic. One man a week. We’d fuck, sometimes it’d be good, other times amazing, sometimes I’d simply want to cry because he wasn’t giving me the orgasm I’d come to depend on. Gradually but steadily, it began to increase – the number of men. My threshold was four guys a week.

And that was when it struck.

There was plenty of sex, and yet, there was something missing. I remember the bile that started rising within me when I watched them walk through my door and blow into my message feed. I remember always wanting to send the person back out of my house, my estate, my fucking Grindr wall. Out of my life!

I began having sex either out of pity for the work they put in visiting me or to spite myself for being so stupid, thinking sex was the answer.

This continued, until my epiphany happened.

His name is Ikenna – a corper, tall, brown-skinned, bespectacled, reserved at first and then a chatterbox when he got comfortable with me.

At first, he was to me like the others – a personification of a penis. But then something different quickly manifested from him. I wouldn’t let myself pinpoint it, but it was there. He was different and he tweaked something in me. Something I thought I had lost totally.

We had sex, and it was great. It was the best I’d had so far. He didn’t have the best dick or the finest ass or the best skills, but he was the best.

It was curious how much he impacted me, considering that sex had already lost its meaning to me. Orgasms came and went and left no tingling sensation afterwards. It was bland. No matter how much they knew how to suck those nipples or how on-point their thrust game was or how well they ravaged the ass with inquisitive tongues, sex had become a bore to me. I had lost the zeal I’d once had for the most carnal of pleasures afforded to man. I could see this happening with every hookup I had, and I didn’t know what to do to help myself.

Then Ikenna came along and fixed me. He had no idea what he did for me. We didn’t go on to date or have sex again. With him, it was a fleeting moment of attraction that gave me such a dose of self awareness that I hadn’t had in a long time. Hooking up with him awakened a consciousness in me that demanded change.

Right after he left, I reached for my phone and deleted Grindr – the app that I’d come to know as soul-grinding. I stepped into the bathroom and washed myself, my body, as though I was washing off it the stench of all the bodies that had pressed down on me, and all the hands that had grasped me, and all the dicks that had shoved into me. I washed off all the sex. And as I washed, I cried. I shed the tears that cast aside my desolation and embraced a whole new identity.

By the time I stepped out of the bathroom, I was a new person. I was celibate.

I am celibate.

Oh how I laugh at myself when I say this (I’m totally disregarding the fact that my friends laugh even more when they hear about it). But it is what it is. I know what I want now – scratch that, I know what I need and it’s not random sex with unmemorable guys.

The first step to solving a problem, a slab says, is acknowledging you have one. And I’ve not just accepted I have this problem, this longing ache to love wholly, to be in love unlike those jaded friends of mine who I had tried emulating. I can’t help but love Love, and no matter how hard I pretend, no matter how much I try, I’m still a sucker for love.

So now, I wait. I wait for it. And until it happens, sex will remain in the backburner, never to be treated like a snack, always serving as a reminder that there is more to a person than how well his dick performs.

Written by Delle