CHRISTMAS DATING
Episode 8
.
.
.
He was sitting on the sofa. His eyes were fixated on the TV. It was a football match between two English teams in the English Premier League.
It made him feel at home. He picked one popcorn after the other from a bowl in front of him. He didn’t notice that I was standing right over his head, behind him.
I kissed him from behind. He wanted to hurry, didn’t want to miss a moment of the match. But I lingered. I made him miss a freekick that was awarded to one of the teams. I made him kiss me longer. He hissed, sighed.
Then I slipped into his arms. He adjusted. My head was on his shoulders now. It was intentional. My hair was undone and I wanted his fingers to comb it softly. And he did. He was as in love with my hair as he was with football.
It was amazing how he could focus on watching the match and still cuddle my hair. His eyes would drift from the TV to my face occasionally, and each time he would kiss my forehead.
It made me feel something deep for him. He loved everything he cherished passionately. Very deeply. Without exception.
Jojo didn’t ask me much about my past relationships. He seemed not to care much about my past. He was contented, he told me once, with me giving him peace of mind and he was grateful that he found comfort in my arms.
He was not like Somto, my third boyfriend. Somto asked me about everything; he wanted to know, through and through, who my previous boyfriends were, what their best foods were, what was their best colours, what their favourite styles in bed were. Very unimaginable things a guy shouldn’t even ask a woman.
One of the days Somto had asked me how many times in a week I had fun in bed with my previous boyfriends. I was surprised to say the least. Like for real?
He was being serious about it. And he wouldn’t let it slide until I had told him. Or should I mention that he once asked me if I ever caught my previous boyfriends in bed with other ladies. I wondered if he was going to buy a private jet with that information. I just wondered.
But Jojo. Lols. He was the kind of guy whose woman can be taken away from in a slit of seconds. He is so free and unsuspecting of anybody. Not even his foe.
Someone who didn’t care who or who I spoke with over the phone? Someone who would hear my conversations with a guy over the phone on speak out and even laugh to jokes made during the call?
I was a little bit of an opposite because I did ask him about certain things. Especially his relationships with people. Not just ladies. People in general. He always didn’t say much, but the few he did say, they were music, always, to my ears.
Jojo had a girlfriend when he was younger. Her name was Samantha. He called her Sammy for short. The day he told me this story, I cried so much he began to wonder why he told me the story in the first place.
Samantha was a new girl at their community primary school in Sango Otta, Ogun state, Nigeria. Her parents had just relocated to that area. That was where Jojo was born and brought up before he left in search of greener pastures.
The class was primary three. She had just walked into the class, neatly dressed, very decent, and had her hair made to topnotch.
She immediately became a cynosure, a model. Girls who attended school there hardly made their hair decently. It was always either with thread tied like big oranges, or it was looking like an abandoned bush.
Jojo said he fell in love with her the moment he heard her speak a decent English. He was such a lover of education when he was young. But his parental background didn’t do much to salvage his craving. But here was Samantha, one who could make his dream come true.
The next day while going to school he brought her a parcel. In the parcel was groundnut and locally made popcorn. Initially he thought she was too proud because she rejected it. No matter how he tried, Sammy didn’t give him face.
That was when he realized that other boys were finding a way to make friends with Sammy, too. He gave up on the dream of becoming friends with her. But that wasn’t the end.
What happened?
One day Sammy was returning home from school. She didn’t really understand the Yoruba language although she heard a little. A group of boys stopped her. She became afraid and started screaming for help. And of a truth, the boys had intentions that wasn’t really good.
Fortunately, Jojo was going in that direction. He saw them with Sammy and ran to know what was happening. The boys were really stubborn people in school. But Jojo stood his ground and had Sammy run away.
Jojo didn’t go to school the next day 🤣😂
The boys taught him a lesson of his life. According to him, his nose had shifted from it’s position, and it was as if his waist would break into many pieces when he tried to walk. I couldn’t stop laughing when he got to this part of the story.
Then something sweet happened. Sammy came that same day looking for him. When Jojo saw her and tried to run into the house out of timidity, he fell down and brushed his shifted nose again 🤣😂
His mother helped him to boil water for his nose. Sammy was just telling him to be strong, that he was a man. That was how their love for each other began.
It was Sammy, said Jojo, who eventually became his first ever home teacher, and of course, lover. So they went from being classmates to being close friends. Then they became teacher and pupil respectively. Then they fell in love with each other.
Jojo taught her core Yoruba language. She paid back by teaching Jojo how to speak good English. By class six, Jojo was coming first in class. And his beautiful Sammy was a Yoruba speaking guru.
Because of their love for each other they decided to go to the same secondary school. They did well in their classes. By this time Jojo was already aware that she had sickle cell anemia. She was always sick in and out of school.
Their love for each other kept growing stronger and stronger. Even when Sammy’s father who was a clergyman warned him to stay away, Sammy wouldn’t let go. Jojo tried to convince her to obey her father but she wasn’t having it.
One time, Jojo said he had accompanied her on an errand. While they were on their way back her father saw them and decided to give him a hot chase. Jojo said that was the day he learnt what it felt like to run a heavenly race 😂
He ran like a running water from a tap. He ran like a hunter. He ran like a vehicle. What he wanted to be sure of was that Sammy’s father didn’t catch up with him.
But they stayed together. Like oil and salt. Like bread and butter. Like tea and sugar. Until a day before their final exams in secondary school.
Sammy fell sick, couldn’t sit for their first paper. By the time the first paper was over, the news of Sammy’s death was flying here and there. She died at the hospital.
Jojo couldn’t believe his ears. He ran as fast as he could to the hospital. And truth it was. Sammy was lying cold. She was gone.
Jojo said he couldn’t feel his body. He lost the taste in his tongue. He couldn’t move his legs. They suddenly became too heavy for him.
Until Sammy’s burial he wished it was all a dream and that he would wake up one morning to see Sammy sitting by his side.
That was the story. Jojo’s first love story ever. And I know it shaped him into being a loving and romantic man. Being friends with Sammy thought him so much about love that he would do anything to bless her memories.
This was a different kind of love. Very different from all other kinds of love I had had in my life. Very different from the kind of love that always ended in December, before Christmas. Jojo’s love was different.
I was expecting the usual breakup lines from him — “It’s over between us” — like all the other guys told me before Christmas. But this one? No! It was three days after Christmas and it still felt as fresh as when it first began.
In his arms I thought about all these. The sweetness he gave me. The joy of being his lover. The peace of sleeping in his arms and waking up safely to be loved over and over again.
He was still watching his match; his fingers cuddling my hair, his chocolate lips kissing my forehead over and again. It was peaceful to know that, how he loved to watch football, to speak softly, was how he loved everything he cherished.
To be continued. . .
— Michael Ituma
