One Too Late

Muna is a fine gentleman. When I look at him, I feel like God looked into my heart and designed him just the way I have grown to like my men – thick, bearded and refined. The contralto in his voice fills me with orgasmic pleasure when he responds, “Who’s there?” after I rung his doorbell.

“It’s me,” I call back.

The smell of lavender embraces me, rushing through my nostrils when he opens the door and with a smile, takes me into a hug. I suddenly find myself brought up against his broad chest with the sexy cleft that pronounces the fullness of his man boobs. He is not one of those lazy boys who stroll the streets of Port Harcourt city, living in their parents’ houses at the age of 30, eating free food, hanging out at the malls dressed like mass-produced Wizkid and Tekno clones, and chasing girls with flashes of muscle and accents filled with too many errors and mispronunciations. No, Muna is a better man than that. He has a job as an Assistant Environmental Engineer with Royal Salt, lives in his own fully-furnished apartment in Shell Residential Area, and drives a G-class Benz automobile. But what drew me to Muna was not his house, car or money; matter of fact, I am the manager of Genesis Deluxe and I have my own tastefully furnished flat in Agip Housing Estate. Muna’s appeal to me is his sense of style and responsibility.

We met through a brief skirmish at my workplace that involved him and one of my oldest staff, Rose, who slighted him with her tarty attitude. Onome, the security guy behind the CCTV cameras, had called to notify me about the fracas downstairs as Muna was causing a scene, demanding to see the manager. I hated meeting with tetchy customers like this, especially when they are male and are probably acting out because they are trying to impress some young woman they were accompanied with. I wasn’t about to go down there. So I sent Victor down to bring the customer up to my office.

Then I turned the music player in my office on low; Walk on Water by Eminem featuring Beyoncé slid smoothly through the Sony sound system. Victor ushered him in minutes later, and he stomped in with the assuredness of a man who knew how to get what he wanted. I found that very attractive, even when I could perceive his annoyance as I approached him with a handshake and an offer to sit down. I asked him what the problem was and he went into a stiff recounting of how Rose had disrespected him as a customer. When he was done, I asked if he would like something to drink. He nodded yes.

“Juice, alcohol, soft drink?” I enquired further.

“Smirnoff Ice will do,” he answered, his earlier testiness already starting to fade in the face of my hospitality.

I walked over to the cellaret and fetched two bottles of Smirnoff Ice from the small icebox compartment. When I turned back to him, I saw him nodding to the tune of the music which I’d fixed on replay. He appeared more relaxed, not so combative.

He noticed me watching him and gave a self conscious chuckle.

“I love this song,” he said, as though explaining his appreciation of the music.

I smiled. I’d learned to use this “music playing in the office” tactic from Aunt Cecilia, who was a psychologist. Many a customer demanding to see the manager had walked into my office angry and left feeling like they were best friends with me. Some had even apologized for causing whatever scene that had demanded my attention.

“It is one of my favourite songs,” I said as I handed him his bottle.

“Eminem and Beyoncé is good music we never saw coming,” he said.

I was mildly startled by that. I mean, of course he knew who Eminem was, but I’d pegged him as one of those straight men who would not be able to tell Beyoncé and Rihanna apart, even if they were both standing before him.

We carried on talking, immediately shifting from the topic of his aggravation. He told me his name was Muna and I told him mine was Osagie. He talked more and I mostly listened. He told me about where he worked, and that he grew up listening to music from a grandpa radio his father gifted him, and that he had a hobby of mixing tapes. Just before he left, he didn’t forget to tell me to handle “the rude girl from downstairs”, and after I assured him that I would, we exchanged contacts, shook hands and said our goodbyes. I watched him make his way to the door and felt a flare of lust inside me. His thick build seemed to fill up the room, his height making the POP ceiling seem much lower than they actually were. I’d earlier noticed how his blue shirt with the folded sleeve hugged his torso and his fitted pants teased me with the fullness of his thighs. When he got to the door and turned to flash me one last smile, I was struck anew by the attractiveness of his nicely chiseled face and the small rosebud lips that stretched from behind the full, well-trimmed beard.

That night, he chatted me up on WhatsApp. He said he wanted to apologize for the scene he had caused and as I smiled at that, I modestly told him that I was the one who ought to be apologizing for the behaviour of my staff who, after my investigation had determined just how wrong she’d been, had been given a suspension and a surcharge. Then we chatted about music, work, life as a young professional in Port Harcourt, till late into the night. We chatted again the following night, and the night after, until it became our thing – lying in bed after a long day, texting or face-timing.

He also began dropping by at my office some evenings on his way home from work. It was during one of those drop-ins, two weeks after his first visit to my office, that we finally forayed into the topic about our sexuality. I brought it up. For two weeks, I’d lusted after him, and I just had to be sure that I wasn’t wasting my time. Passenger’s When We Were Young was eclipsing the atmosphere in my office. He didn’t say much. He simply leaned forward and kissed me.

For a moment after his lips touched mine, I sat still, like I’d lost my motor skills. It had been a long time since I’d been kissed. Years, in fact. And the sensation of Muna’s mouth moving over mine fired up the senses I thought had died post-Demola. The moment of my immobility passed and I leaned into the kiss, throwing my slender arms about his shoulders as he lifted his hand to grasp the lower part of my head. I clung to him and he held on to me, and we kissed, our bodies gliding against each other in heated romance.

“I want you,” he said in a harsh whisper as he broke the kiss to trail his lips and tongue down the column of my neck.

My nerves were on fire and I wanted him too.

But just as he lifted me onto my desk, the headlong rush of the fire that was our passion was doused by the intrusion of the Outside world. My intercom buzzed, startling us to the reality of where we were. Victor wanted to let me know that my attention was needed over some new deliveries. By the time I was done with that dialogue, I’d retained the aplomb that Muna had shattered with his unexpected kiss.

So that when he said with a roguish smile, “May we pick up from where we left off?”, I gave a small laugh and shaking my head, said, “I have to get back to work.”

He nodded. The mood was now self conscious. We said our goodbyes and he left. And I let out a sigh and dropped into my seat, suddenly trembling as the past surged forward to overwhelm my present.

I had neither kissed nor reacted as strongly emotionally to a guy in seven years; not since I had the misfortune of knowing Demola. I was twenty-three and he was a year older, an apprenticed apothecary who lived a few poles from my house. It began the day I came down with typhoid and was directed by my mother to go see his boss, a rather stoic man who was nicknamed “Professor” in the neighborhood because of how well his prescriptions seemed to work in getting people well. Halfway through my treatment, and he had to travel; so he handed over my care – and the rest of my injections – to his apprentice, the reserved young man with eyes the colour of pixie dust. It was the unusual colour of Demola’s eyes that initially drew me to him, but we never got around to talking much to each other until his boss handed my treatment over to him. As much as needles scared the bejesus out of me, there was something about the way this guy administered his, which both calmed me and turned me on. By the time I was scheduled to take my last injection, I wished I would get struck down again with typhoid so I would have a legitimate excuse to come see him.

Demola would not take money for my final treatment. He said he liked me. I was fascinated by the colour of his eyes. And when he said he was from Niger Republic, I wondered how come his name was Demola. He said he was born and raised in Ogun State, but his mother had told him that his father was a man from Niger who didn’t wait till he was born before disappearing. I began to frequent the pharmacy, sometimes under the pretext of buying Vitamin C, just to see him. The day I kissed him, there’d been no customers in the pharmacy and I’d told him to take me to the convenience. And there, assailed by the antiseptic scent of the clean toilet, and with my heart pounding away behind my ribcage, I made my move. He kissed me back – and so bloomed our love affair. He would text me whenever his boss was not in so I’d come over for a kiss, a smooch and a blowjob. Then I started sneaking him into my room for sex on Sundays while my parents were away at one meeting or the other, or every other day when I could manage the opportunity.

Things went sour quickly when Demola began to show how jealous he could be. It turned out that behind his reserve was a very vile temper that was ignited every time he felt like he didn’t have enough of my attention. I wasn’t flattered by his fits of jealousy; I was annoyed by it. And then, he began making comments that sounded like he was charging me with turning him gay.

“After all, you initiated me into this when you kissed me,” he would often accuse me whenever we had a fight.

I found this very ridiculous. I was starting to have enough of him. And I told him we had to stop seeing each other. He looked at me with a deadly calm in those unusually coloured eyes and didn’t fly off into a rage.

He nodded and said, “So after initiating me into this, you now want to dump me, abi?”

“I didn’t initiate you into anything, Demola,” I said with no little exasperation. “You can’t suddenly start liking boys simply because I kissed you, if it wasn’t already in you.”

“No problem, Osagie,” he carried on with that unsettling calm. “You said we should stop seeing each other. No problem.”

The next day, the sex tape I’d once showed Demola that I made with Scott, a boy from my university who I’d been sleeping with before I met him, hit the internet. It was all over Facebook, and Scott was frantic in the calls he made to me.

“You’ve ruined my life, Osagie,” he lamented bitterly, and finally spat at me, “I wish I’d never met you!”

I could not believe Demola had done what he did to me. I could not even believe he’d taken the video from my phone and had had it all this while, evidence of his intent from before I even thought of breaking up with him. But the repercussions of the revenge porn didn’t end with the demise of my friendship with Scott. The leaked tape found its way to my father, who collapsed with a heart attack after an unfortunate neighbour showed it to him. He died before he was gotten to the hospital. My mother was the only parent who knew beforehand of my homosexuality, and had always encouraged me to be true to myself. Her support evaporated with the death of my father, and every time she looked at me for seven years, she accused me with the blame of my father’s death.

The regurgitation of my past reminded me of the reason I’d studiously stayed away from getting attached to any guy since Demola ruined my life. For so long, I hated him and saw him in every man that came my way. Muna was the first man to get past the barricade I put up seven years ago.

Realizing this startled me, and I didn’t respond to his messages that evening – or his calls the next morning, or his texts in the afternoon.

Was I that bad a kisser? he texted on WhatsApp.

I chuckled and typed back: No. You were really good.

Are you sure? Because I feel like I should try again to prove to you that I’m really good at this, he responded.

What did you have in mind? I typed.

Meet me at my place this evening after work.

I contemplated the message for a few minutes, unsure if I was ready to take this step, if I even wanted to. Then I typed back: Send me the address. I’ll be there at seven.

And so I am here, on this Saturday evening at 7. 12 pm. He has ushered me into his living room with its beige painted walls, the lights turned on dim and the tunes of Jennifer Lopez’s Waiting For Tonight circulating the room. Muna is in his boxer shorts and a T-shirt that accentuated his thickness.

“I hope you brought a hungry stomach with you,” he says as he bustles about, getting me a drink.

“Oh, this is a date?” I enquire with lifted brows.

He stops and looks into my eyes. “It’s certainly not a hookup. I’m not about to simply ravish you without showing you that you’re special.”

I laugh self consciously, feeling my doubts surge back up inside me. This is all too much too soon. A flash of Demola’s visage, the twisted version of his face that I’d conjured up seven years ago, goes through my mind.

We dine on a sumptuous meal of jollof rice, salad and fried plantains. There is an open bottle of red wine. After that, we retire to his bedroom for some intense kissing. Even though I haven’t kissed anyone since I was twenty-three, I can tell that he is an accomplished kisser. I have to make an effort to pull myself up from the tides of passion to place my hands on his chest and ask to take a bath first.

“Cool,” he says, smiling through his beard. “I’ll bathe with you.”

And ensconced in the clean tiles and spotless whites of his bathroom, I am confronted by his naked form and his turgid dick. It is frankly the most beautiful thing I’d beheld since my first paycheck: thick, like the rest of him, veiny and hungry. We showered together, kissing while the water ran down our bodies.

Our passion is barely doused by the cold shower by the time we return to the bedroom. We fall into Muna’s bed and start to kiss as he pulls me to him. We writhe about on the bed, skin against skin, the intimacy reigniting in me everything sexual that I’d buried for all those years. I slither down to Muna’s crotch and take his hard cock in my mouth. Sucking him feels strange and yet so familiar. He moans and grinds his hips against my face, pushing the back of my head onto his stiff dick for the maximum pleasure of my fellatio. I suck him with enthusiasm, licking his cock and balls, eager to get as much as I can. His hips thrust harder as I suck, as he fucks my eager mouth, making the guttural sounds of one who was enjoying the feel of my lips wrapped around his member.

Then I let go of his cock and slither back to his face to kiss him.

“My turn,” he murmurs after we kiss for awhile, and then gets down to my crotch to claim my cock with his mouth.

The second he wraps me around the warm wetness of his mouth, I feel an explosion of sensations from that centre. I buck and jerk, helpless under the onslaught of these strange-yet-all-too-familiar feelings coursing through my body as Muna sucks me. His hot mouth works my dick for a while until I am panting, positive that I will erupt inside his mouth any moment. He seems to sense me peaking and stops. He turns me around so that my ass is presented to him.

And then, after the preliminaries, he slides his rock-hard cock into my waiting hole. I feel a welcome fullness take over me as he fills me with that first entry. I sigh with deep pleasure, suddenly wondering why I ever gave up sex.

“Fuck me,” I command in a low tone.

And Muna proceeds to do just that. He fucks my ass deep and hard, stretching the hole. As he fucks me, he slaps my ass cheeks too, a bit of savagery that ratchets up our passion. It doesn’t even feel like much time has passed since I’d last done this. The years fall away as I drive my body back against Muna’s thrusts, receiving him, welcoming him, relishing him. Then he turns me around, onto my back with my legs in the air. And he pounds me hard and fast as he holds my legs up. I take hold of my own cock and wank it, feeling the fever of my approaching climax climb.

Soon, with a ragged cry, I am shooting my creamy cum onto my body as Muna keeps fucking me hard. The sight of my ejaculation drives him crazy and his thrusts picks up a rapid pace that ends moments later, when he slumps on top of me, his dick spasming inside my hole, his breath exploding from him in sharp bursts against the side of my head.

“Will you be my boyfriend?” he suddenly says in the quietness that follows after our lovemaking, as we lie on his bed, with me on my belly idly stroking his nipples and him on his back idly rubbing my lower back.

I go still, not saying a word.

He continues. “Osagie, I want you to let me love you, care for you, be a part of your life.”

As his words hit me, I feel my insides recoil. I do not want this, I tell myself. I cannot do this. Even lying right there next to him, I feel a chasm rip open between us and began to stretch us apart.

He seems to sense it and turns to me, his expression earnest. “Please…” he says.

“Muna…”

“Please…”

“I can’t…I don’t…”

“Why?”

Demola’s twisted face flashes through my kind again. It passes and I find myself looking into the void of a possible future as Muna’s boyfriend. I see me not trusting him, suspecting his moves, resenting him for the vulnerability that will come from being in a relationship, hating myself for that, hating myself even more should he prove time and time again that he isn’t capable of hurting me, knowing I should let go, but finding myself incapable of doing that.

Finally I sigh. “There is too much baggage from my past, Muna,” I rely.

“You’ve been hurt before?” he asks.

“Yes.”

“Then let me take away the hurt.”

I think about how rough it was the past seven years, how my bitterness against Demola slowly crystallized into an immovable structure in my heart the more I stayed in my father’s house, under the unflinching accusation of his death. I think about how I barely have a relationship with my mother and siblings, how fresh the wounds seem to be every time I speak to them on the phone.

“I have to go,” I say as I rise from the bed.

“Osagie…”

“I have to go, Muna,” I say with icy detachment.

He doesn’t argue. He simply lies there on the bed, watching me as I get dressed. Then I kiss him goodbye. We may fuck again, of course. But the offer to be more was just one too late.

Written by Peaches