“Probably the biggest regret of my life.” He gave a sad little smile. “I thought he was holding me back. I even tried to force him out of the closet. I know I shouldn’t have done that, but I got tired of being his secret. Now here I am, still pining for him, still missing him.”
“You could still call him, you know. There’s still a cha–”
“Let’s talk about something else.”
“Matome–”
“Not now, Nsuri. Not today. One of these days we’ll talk about everything that happened, but today we figure out your shit. Okay?”
“Okay.” I held his free hand. “I’ll be here when you need me.”
“I know, and thank you.”
“I love you. You know that, right?”
“That’s it. If you don’t stop with the sad stuff, I’m calling my mom to kick you out.”
I smiled, wiping away the tear squeezing from the corner of my left eye. “I promise not to do it again. Anyway…where was I?”
“You were pursuing the authentic human condition so as to more authentically portray it,” he said.
I noted a sense of playful mockery in his voice. I rolled my eyes at that.
“First, we have to promise each other not to say the word ‘authentic’ for the rest of the conversation. Whoever does, owes the other lunch for a month.”
He laughed. “Done and done.”
“Thank you. Now, the first bar I visited was filled with students who wanted some fun while waiting for their next batch of assignments and exams.”
“University students at a bar?”
“It was a club, then.”
“Bar, club, whatever; the first time you told the story you said you didn’t fit in – I don’t understand that. You were,” he tugged on the blanket, “what, at least two years older than most of them?”
“Yeah, but at the same time, worlds apart.”
“That, you have to explain.”
“I no longer belonged with them. Yeah sure, I was twenty-four, but at twenty-four people are already working towards a retirement fund. There was nothing after that, absolute jackshit, except the retirement fund and a peaceful death. Sometimes, when I’m lucid from my medication, I think that is the thing that pushed me over the edge.”
For some reason, it felt like the hairband keeping my braids from my face was suddenly tighter than it needed to be. I took it off and flipped my hair over my right shoulder. “I wasn’t a child anymore. I was finally a part of ‘the real world,’ and I had been preparing for that real world since childhood. That’s what they tell you in school and you start thinking adulthood is something grand and you should feel lucky to achieve it.”
