Married But Available

by B. Nyamnjoh

  Miss Helena Paradise invites her clients to breathe deeply, and to practice feeling more comfortable in their bodies: ‘Because so much of our bodies as women are hidden and internal, many of us don’t know ourselves’; ‘Spend quality time getting to know yourself’; ‘Don’t be afraid to experiment’; ‘Turn the temperature to let’s get naked and experiment’; ‘Linger over various body parts and make a mental note of parts that kick start you’; ‘Use a lubricant to enhance sensation’; ‘Remember that for a vast majority of us the clitoris is the main pleasure centre and the brain the most important pleasure organ’; ‘Regular self pleasuring would increase your desire’; ‘Explore your sexual fantasies – sex starts in your head, with sight, sound, smell and creative imagination’; ‘temporarily holding back provides for a final explosion’; ‘Men rush in, rush out: most men we come across seem to think that sex is a sort of race they’ve got to be through with as soon as possible – short, sharp and like lightning. It is up to us women to show them what pleasures there are in taking things slowly’; ‘Once you know what you like and learn how to press your own buttons, you can show others how to press them for you’; ‘It takes two to tango, but only a woman’s knowledge of her body and mind to be truly in charge’; ‘Women unlike men know that it is not the men in your life that counts, it is the life in your men’; Men like to think you need something big inside you to be having a good time. They love doing the same old thing the same old way’; ‘Penetration needn’t always be the main course. It could be the starter or the dessert as well. There’s a lot more on the menu than a supplemented or enhanced male package with a few additional inches of hard flesh’; ‘Given the right moves, no woman can resist having a good time’; ‘Try asking him to get versatile with his tongue by writing all the letters of the alphabet on your vulva with his tongue. Can he reach O before your orgasm?’; ‘Unlike men, women can keep coming’; ‘A lover should be like a soul mate who knows what you are thinking before you think it. You need such a person to give you fire’; ‘Tell your men: the more you can make a girl come the more she’s going to want to please you’; ‘Periods are a woman’s way of seeing off a man who hasn’t made you pregnant’; ‘Women are learning to call the shots the female way. They can do whatever they put their minds to and take total control of their lives’; ‘We no longer have to be imitation men to have self confidence’; ‘Women make love to be romantic, men are romantic to make love’; ‘After sex, resist the urge to roll over and read a magazine or something. Try to share a shower, pillow talk…’ And she always ends her sessions with: ‘If love is the strongest human emotion and sex the most powerful force in human life, isn’t it but normal to get both right? Practice makes perfect. And as the people along the African Nile say: ‘Once you’ve drunk from the River Nile, you will return to drink again and again’…”

  It’s hardly surprising that Miss Helena Paradise has struck it rich in Mimboland, where women believe a man is yours only when on top of you, Lilly Loveless told herself. Her lessons are not meant only for women wanting to break free of repressive relationships with men. They are meant as well for women seeking to improve their relationships with men. Hence her multiple tips to couples: ranging from how to use various sexual positions (missionary, rear entry, shallow thrust; cat technique, spoons/standing on location, reverse cowgirl, love boat, etc.) to good effect, to what to do to turn on or to keeping your partner going (blindfolding partners who are shy of their bodies; polishing the top of the penis with the palm of the hand; breast play; palm circles; lip service; exploration with the tongue; and taking long journeys of foreplay).

  Two or three hours after Bobinga Iroko went out, Lilly Loveless heard his door, just next to hers, close. He was with someone, she could tell from the laughing voices. Apparently he had found what he thought he needed for the evening, thought Lilly Loveless. The boisterousness continued for some time. A while later, she heard his door open and close again. She imagined that activity there had thus ceased.

  Through with typing from Mariette’s notebook, Lilly Loveless went to knock on Bobinga Iroko’s door, only to have it opened by a fully dressed woman. She hadn’t left yet after all. Lilly Loveless could hear the sound of water. While waiting for Bobinga Iroko to finish his shower or whatever, Lilly Loveless asked, “What kind of work is this for a beautiful girl like you? Why do you do it?”

  She looked deeply into Lilly Loveless’ eyes briefly. At that same moment Bobinga Iroko stepped out of the shower with a towel around his waist, and stood between the girls and the door.

  She disengaged Lilly Loveless’ eyes and gently pushed Bobinga Iroko aside so she could get through the door. The girl gone, Lilly Loveless turned her attention to Bobinga Iroko. “I’m sorry,” she uttered.

  “Not to,” said Bobinga Iroko. “There are others where I found her.”

  Lilly Loveless felt totally misunderstood. She felt like exploding. But she kept her madness in check, somehow. She wondered what manner of man he was. She had come to think of Bobinga Iroko as someone who took delight in twisting the meaning of things. She felt like calling him “a postmodernist fundamentalist” whose passion for text beyond context seeks to show the many readings or listenings possible to any text or conversation, thereby creating utter chaos in meaning. Often with Bobinga Iroko, she did not understand whether to continue in a witty, satirical vein, withdraw, or take him on in his flights of fancy and imaginations.

  “Why do you make life so complicated when you can simply breathe in and out and things are equally OK? I suppose it makes people wonder which part of you they want to listen to, hear or feel. Do you deliberately choose to be complicated?”

  “I haven’t the foggiest idea what you are talking about,” replied Bobinga Iroko, a mischievous smile on his face.

  This further infuriated her.

  After watching some news together in hostile silence, Lilly Loveless could not stand the tension, so she stormed out back to her room. She showered, put on a loose fitting kaba made for sleeping by ‘Desired Dresses’ – Britney’s tailor, and went out on the balcony to get a bit of fresh hair and think about what had just happened next door.

  Hands posed on the rail of the balcony’s edge, Lilly Loveless began to take in the evening. And what did she see? That the street along this side of the hotel was empty – except for a lone woman standing on the other side looking directly up. She was bringing the fingers of her outstretched hand toward her several times in quick succession, as if she were calling for Lilly

  Loveless to come. Lilly Loveless put her hand to her chest with a questioning look, and she nodded.

  With a spirit of anxiety but mainly of curiosity, Lilly Loveless changed out of the kaba, back into her trousers and light green button up shirt, also made by Britney’s tailor, the man who sews for women who want to be women, look like women, feel like women. She walked apprehensively, yet eagerly down the stairs, out the front door of the hotel, and turned right. The woman was still there. And sure enough, it was the girl who had been with Bobinga Iroko earlier that evening. What did she want with Lilly Loveless?

  She told Lilly Loveless her name was Dujamaisvu. Lilly Loveless didn’t say anything. The girl fumbled in her pocket for a pack of cigarettes. She took a cigarette and lit it quickly.

  Lilly Loveless said, “No, with me you don’t smoke.”

  She paused, threw the lit cigarette to the ground, stamped it out and looked a little incredulously at Lilly Loveless. “You don’t know me that well, to hate me that much,” said she.

  “I don’t hate you,” protested Lilly Loveless. “It’s smoking I don’t like.”

  “You know how many men I have let kiss me and sleep with me just because they have money in their wallets – men with filthy arms, dirty hearts and holes in their souls, men who stink like hell, men who make you feel cheap and soiled?”

  Lilly Loveless listened in silence and with contemplative attention.

  “Men who think they are doing me a favour by sleeping
with me, since in their eyes I am a girl who would do anything for money.”

  Lilly Loveless’ curiosity surged. “So why do you sleep with men for money, like you just did with Bobinga Iroko?”

  “Oh, he’s not a man, that one,” said Dujamaisvu. “You…” and she engaged Lilly Loveless’ eyes again, like she did in Bobinga Iroko’s hotel room briefly, “…you are a man.”

  Lilly Loveless raised her eyes in wonderment.

  “Why do you say that?”

  “What do you make of a man who invites you to his room, pays you and says, ‘I don’t want to make love to you, I only want to get close to you.’?”

  “So tell me your story,” Lilly Loveless asked.

  Dujamaisvu began. “Girls like us never really get what we want. We take what we are given… I was brought up like most decent girls… Hardly could I ever have imagined that one day I’d be reduced to cleaning toilets or selling my body like a public toilet…”

  Lilly Loveless was all ears, only digressing once in a while to digest the scene in Bobinga Iroko’s room.

  “…so as you see, the world of prostitution is like the bait fishermen use to lure fish to their hooks. First, poverty brings you knocking on the door of prostitution as a temporary respite. Then, before you know it, you are completely sucked in. If there’s little money forthcoming, you stick in there for the crumbs and in the hope of meeting Father Christmas some day. If there’s money, you become so used to earning it this way that you lose faith in all your other abilities to earn money in a another manner. Your normal activities suffer, as do your normal relationships. People use you and dump you as if you were filth, and before you know it, you start believing you are filth,” concluded Dujamaisvu.

  Listening to the girl’s story took her words away. When she recovered her tongue, Lilly Loveless asked, “Have you been back to your village?”

  “No,” said Dujamaisvu, “not once in the last three years have I been there. School is challenging, and raising money for fees and subsistence even more so. All I know how to do is take off my clothes, and this doesn’t even bring in much to make ends meet.”

  Lilly Loveless’ mind flashed back to the exclusive mail clubs back home in Bruhlville where she lap and strip danced, and felt herself in the shoes of this woman, whose name she couldn’t quite bring herself to call.

  “Do you want to go back?” asked Lilly Loveless.

  Dujamaisvu looked searchingly, then said dreamily with a faraway look in her eyes, “I would like to see my mom, and sisters and brothers and cousins and above all, by son…”

  “Well, you can’t not go back. Shouldn’t you visit them?” Lilly Loveless asked, almost feeling the girl’s pain of separation from loved ones.

  They talked on and on … until Dujamaisvu said, “Why don’t we continue talking in your room?”

  Surprised, Lilly Loveless thought of quickly stamping out the possibility, but when she opened her mouth, the only words that came out were “Why not?”

  In the morning, Lilly Loveless pushed the girl to leave early, but her heart was reluctant to go with her. When Lilly Loveless accompanied her out of the hotel, Dujamaisvu asked: “You said you’re leaving tomorrow morning?”

  “Yes, I’m leaving the hotel at 6am back for Puttkamerstown.”

  “I’ll be here at 5:30am to say goodbye,” said the girl. “If it wasn’t for the fact that I am writing my end of semester exams today and tomorrow at the University of Assieyam, I would be delighted to come to spend the night with you again.”

  “Please don’t come,” Lilly Loveless implored.

  “How can one not come when you’re around, baby?” asked Dujamaisvu, flirtatiously.

  “Bobinga Iroko will be here too. He’s travelling with me and we are going in his car,” Lilly Loveless spelt out.

  “Don’t talk to me about Bobinga Iroko,” said Dujamaisvu, then turned and walked off.

  Lilly Loveless watched her disappear into the distance. Then she turned and slowly retraced her steps to the hotel room, not knowing what to think about last night and the events and exchanges that filled it. As dawn broke, billboards sprung to life bearing prominent slogans: ‘Girl Child Education. A Citizen Duty, A Vital Choice’; ‘Women: Bed Rock of the Society’; ‘WO-men: Well-Organised Men’; ‘Access to Productive Resources for the Prosperity of Mimboland’; ‘Condomise to say No to HIV/AIDS’. Lilly Loveless smiled when she read the last slogan. She always carried with her the box of condoms she was offered the day she landed at the Sawang International Airport. She still vividly remembered the words of the fair skinned lady who had given her the box: “life’s too sweet and too short to waste”. Lilly Loveless regretted not being able to call the kind lady who had insisted she shouldn’t hesitate to call if she needed something. If she hadn’t misplaced the woman’s business card, she would have called just to let her know that she had had a fruitful stay in Mimboland and was now rounding up her fieldwork to return to Muzunguland.

  Just outside the hotel, Lilly Loveless noticed a postal of the ruling party carrying the efigy of President Longstay. The words on the postal had been freshly corrupted with a bold marker from ‘Winners of the latest Democratic Elections’ to ‘Sinners of the Latest Democratic Erections’. She wondered just who could have pulled such a fast one on a government notoriously reputed for the vigilance of its secret service. Dujamaisvu? No, she didn’t strike me as political, Lilly Loveless dismissed the thought. Bobinga Iroko? Perhaps.

  ***

  When she visited a cybercafé in Sawang on their way back to Puttkamerstown, Lilly Loveless found mail for her from Dujamaisvu. She couldn’t have thought that the girl would decipher an email address scribbled for her on a matchbox with no intention of legibility whatsoever. Curious to know what Dujamaisvu could possibly have written, Lilly Loveless read the mail: “Dear Lilly, I miss you my love. Come back to me sweetheart, I’m sitting here at the bar of your hotel waiting. You know what I want, what I’m anticipating. Let me touch you and tease you, squeeze you and please you. You make me smile, you make me shine, for no one moves me like you. There are lots of things that you don’t know. You make my body burn. I smile and bite my lip at the things you say. My eyes roll back and my toes curl. Just know I’m yours. Let me be the lovely and colourful butterfly tatoed to your right buttock. Bizou…”

  Lilly Loveless whispered the word ‘Bizou’ slowly out loud. She liked the way it vibrated on the roof of her mouth and oozed from her lips, filling her with delight. But she refused to be tempted. She deleted the mail and spammed the email address. Who was it, who said that sleeping with someone you wouldn’t necessarily meet socially is a little bit of erotic escapism? She couldn’t remember, but she had learnt her lesson from the disastrous phone call of the bumster of Sunsandland. Full of feelings though she had been, she had clearly asked him to respect her boundaries. “There’s no reason why you shouldn’t write to me at home, but please don’t try to phone me there. If you should need to contact me – for any reasons other than the obvious – you can leave a message for me at the Department of Geography, Muzunguland African Studies Institute, Bruhlville. I call in most days for my messages.” Yet the bumster had ignored all this and done what he did. Never again would she allow such experiences to haunt her.

  28

  When Lilly Loveless returned from Nyamandem, she found a note from Britney saying she had dashed off to Zintgraffstown to attend to her mom and daughter reported sick with typhoid. In the same note, Britney insisted she would be back in time to see her off to the airport in Sawang. Lilly Loveless didn’t find Desire either who had again taken advantage of the prolonged strike to go to her home village to sort out some matters. She thus decided to use the few days she still had in Puttkamerstown to organize a few focus group discussions with some flying-shirts, for which she received much support from Burning Spear, Adapepe’s boyfriend, but from which she didn’t learn that much.

  The flying-shirts were not that keen to talk about their sexuality and
explain why they did what they did with women, jumping from one to the other, with little regard for how women really felt or what they really wanted from relationships with men. When they weren’t busy trying to chat her up or to extract information on how to get visas into Muzunguland, the flying-shirts were unnerving and gave clichéd answers to her questions.

  “A man is a man,” said one repeatedly, flexing his muscles and pulling up his shirt sleeve, in response to almost every question asked. It was he whom Lilly Loveless was convinced had stripped her with his eyes far more times than she could remember. If only he knew that back home in Muzunguland she stripped as effortlessly as she dressed herself, the thought crossed her mind, he would have given her his last Mim dollar to feed his eyes. Although Lilly Loveless insisted names were not important, as she was more interested in opinions than in identities, he kept shouting “I am Randy”, as if he ran the risk of forgetting his name.

  “That’s the way God created the world, for men to lead and women to follow with obedience and service, said another in a deep intimidating voice. “Bend skin give chop for masa,” he quoted a popular song to make his point. “And there’s nothing a man will eat that stops hunger forever,” he added.

  A third said, “It all boils down to nature. Men by nature are not creatures of compromise, so when a woman starts asking for concessions, it’s time to move camp.”

  A fourth agreed about nature. “Society is all about protecting the weak, and as far as I’m concerned, no one is weaker than a woman. One could argue that the notion of one-man-one-woman is foreign to man, a way of controlling and regulating his nature. At the core, we are still hunters and gatherers, out for the kill. We may tame ourselves for all we want as society dictates, but when we close the door we really become who we are. In that instance you may try to convince yourself but you’ll never force your biological nature to accept that you’re carved for that one woman stretched next to you. It is then up to you to decide whether or not to disregard the one-on-one rules. Funny, for all the rational ways of life that have been designed for us to live as a society, at the end of the day it’s the raw call of nature that we answer.”