Me, Jackie…

Think of this. You are young, never been kissed, with OK looks and no attitude; you die for a guy but his eyes roam the other lasses instead, never to settle on you for even one single wink!
You grow up, pass through high school and the status quo persists pitifully. Your hopes to net him long died though but the etches of his impression linger on in your heart… he really was something, that kid. But then you have had your other share of experiences with bigger boys and carry some sad facts hard to swallow.
Not that you are weather beaten but - at 26 you feel you have seen it all, done it all, blur, blur... but one little truth borne off experience is that pretty boys don’t stay long in love, especially if their mouths aren’t gagged, they aren't blind and their ears work well. If their humor rivals Bill Cosby’s and you are their bitch on the block, sorry, baby, in just a matter of time you’ll become their former bitch on the block.
So means, if you’re wise then you pool your coupling efforts towards the lesser-bestowed lads instead. They will love you with all their might to no end. If only you could close your eyes to their looks forever, life would be a permanent candy when everyday weather asked for a candy to wash away the need for another candy after the last candy strolled down your thirsty throat! Too bad, if your search mark is too high, coz you will soon move on in your quest for Mr. Right, whom you probably envisage is still up, unseen, high in the clouds; his coming will be announced with a blistering thunderclap bordering that of the Lord’s return. So be it! For me I feel wiser having gone through several blizzards up till this far.
The heck! I tell you, that first kid, Noel was one hell of a guy to dream about, day and night. He was 13 then, and I, 9. Everything about him was exquisite for me, I mean, all save for the fact that he saw the other girls but me. I felt inadequate and wrecked utterly! Any gal gone past a hard crush may easily glimpse into what I felt…
That was then, when I was that little girl at that tender age still presumed, unknowing; hormone streams were already beginning to gather in readiness for the teenage storm. I remember neighborhood instances when, given a choice between breath and Noel, I would easily have chosen Noel. I wanted to wake from dreams and find me on the love laps of Noel but that dream never came to be. Maybe I wasn't any looky enough to warrant a cool baby like Him then; everyone kept saying how too long my legs were, or how I walked like a boy, especially so with my bows for legs. Did it really matter anyway? If you loved someone, wasn't it only about the heart and nothing else? At that tender age, I remember Thomas wanted me but I thought he was too rugged. Danston too wanted me but - compared to Thomas, his attitude was horrid to warrant my taking.
I declined both advances but left my focus open for an angel, probably still drifting down from upstream. I can't remember anyone else strongly itching and inching for me through out my entire mid teenage but seventeen brought forth an avalanche of lads. So much had changed in my physique and attitude and I think they were for the better coz, I don't think all those swarms of boys coming on me saw nothing worth to hover over. No more disproportionate legs. No more pimples like moon hills sprouting every waking morning.
Compulsion to have the best of lads was waning and – I bet greater maturity had popped up. That was the first time when another real boy really swept me off my feet and sheer ecstasy gripped me. Dick was his name. He was four years older than I and was marketing something somewhere in town; it didn’t matter to know what but only the fact that his smile lit my heart a little more each next time. Before long I was eating love for all my meals of the week. Life became a fairy tale and every absence from Dick set my heart into spins as bad as his presence. Whichever way, I was hooked and nothing really went on without him in my breath. Still a mere school gal but with the finals slow approaching, days of the week were long to end, especially so since Dick wasn't around me over my school hours and his work regimes - and I had to wait long before my heart began to beat again. He showed plain affection for me. He gave me attention more than I thought was necessary. He pampered me like his kid-toy. Dick knew how to treat me right every minute and it set my whole being fully seduced beyond redemption. My eyes saw nowhere else than him…
It was at age eighteen that I got the first kiss, and - I think it started another crazy spin in my life aside from the love-stupefied wench that I had become. So passionate, it was as much as it just about killed me from the sheer joy it brought. Dick’s hot lips nearly turned me into a zombie! How could I have been managing without a kiss before, really? How I thought I had wasted the past teen years not knowing the ravaging pleasure of the kiss of a lover - and the cuddles as company! Everyday after that first one, I swear I needed a kiss; my life became dependent on daily doses that I swear I could cross miles just to get some to pass the night over into morning. It was also at age eighteen that I first did it – oops! Knowing Dick really made me cross borders that for all lasses are valued with deepest chaste. I hasten to pass that point for the sheer pleasure and pain that drives through me at its mere mention.
Things took a bad turn with the coming of Yodit to the fore. She was from Eritrea, a refugee awaiting translocation to Australia. The week she landed her seventeen years into our neighborhood was the very week that my heart began to suffer nose-dive losses. Truly, she was a real something, Yodit. Everything I wasn't, she was. And everything I was, she enhanced. She was one of those women whom God probably spared time to mould as a proof of his understanding of beauty. Yodit was not a common face you met round every next corner of the street. She was tall, hitting six, almost egg-yellow skinned and with a ready and an almost intoxicating grin that ever said come to me boys.
Dick took to Yodit like a bad need, leaving me packed at the love lights traffic -thunderstruck. I had thought of myself indispensable and it nearly destroyed me that Dick could drop me like a real bad habit. Every attempt to reclaim him took him farther and farther from me, and so I gathered every breath I could muster and kept off him. For me that was lesson number one. Never to predict a boy; but to leave him as wild card in the love play. If he’s helplessly cute, don’t take him as seriously, not unless you have reason beyond reasonable doubt. My neighborhood had all the best examples of its emotional pains in couple and mine was but flip of a page in the chapter. Everyone seemed to be dissing the other for another like in soap operas. Sweet affairs were ever standing and ending over time.
Yodit and Dick had their fun and – fortunately or not - it brought forth a baby boy - Babu. She left behind the boy, ten months then, with the father painfully when her time was up and she needed to proceed to Australia as planned. Dick has since got married but to another lass after hopes of uniting with Yodit met stiff Visa problems. Rumor had it that Yodit’s heart moved on right as soon as her aero-plane hit the airport tarmac in Perth. Her new man was the very pilot who flew her into Australia. I don’t blame her. And I don’t blame that fortunate pilot…
Along my way came Ben the egoist. He really knew how to build aerial castles. I almost rented one of them. The only good thing about Ben was tail-on-end humor that he dropped in tons. No minute I spent with him missed laughter and time passed fast. Soon he wanted to marry me but – were we really ready? I wondered. You don’t raise a family on meals of permanent laughter alone. I said he goes for a career first before we discussed anything matrimonial. Then I was only twenty-one, and he, twenty-eight.
My end with Ben came when he got into the grooves of my best friend, Shirley. She was twenty, not as cute as Yodit had been but everything about her carried a true tag of SEXY! Sooner, they eloped and not long after wind came back to the neighborhood that they were married and she was expecting their first baby.
I really was disgusted and irritated that I had seemingly become a proofing ground for boys and girls; but that taught me lesson number two; to barricade my boy against the girls around me. Many times, the innocent and awkward exchanges they make aren’t as innocent but silent calls to scratch itches they mutually feel and grow. Between them are many silent lusty questions and wonders transpiring quietly and hoping for exploration and exploitation, come the right time. You end up the fool in the shadowed love triangle long commenced behind your loyal back. Dick once joked that he could get any real queen, citing that - between any man and woman, it’s just a matter of time before they close in, nothing withstanding as long as pheromones kept moving back and forth.
Richard followed Ben. He was a perfect gentleman; handsome, well groomed and styled. His efforts at romance were drawn from the likes of Harlequin romance and he perfected the art to the last dot, leaving you feeling like a true lady in a soap opera where the perfect lass gets the star lad.
He was so apart from the previous boys in my life and I thought the change was indeed welcome. Richard called when he promised. He never was late for dates and he dressed well, spoke well and all... he pulled back my chair in restaurants and stood when I got up in the middle of a meal if I had to visit the loo. He called it The Ladies’.
Sometimes I thought he was painful, having to play right every step of the way as if life was as straight as a line between some two points. There were times, and they grew, when I itched for the contrary. I wanted more natural surges. I wanted temper flares and hence – cat fights, real squeals. I yearned him to be escape dry humor that was his trademark and to spell things, as they were – spades as S-P-A-D-E-S and not S-P-O-O-N-S. But Richard wasn’t any forthcoming, he was growing more and more English down time and it raked my sanity wildly.
From the depths of my yearnings came the desire for a typical ruff-neck to complete the half that came with Richard. One day, at the French Cultural Center after watching a French play, and - I don’t gather any French at all, I spotted a large hulk of a lad as crowds streamed out. He looked so big, so hard and so blunt, the kind I craved for; his shoulders were wide giving him an easy comparison to a rugby star’s. Our eyes met behind Richard’s back and stuck briefly. My heart missed a beat and began to pound beyond control. His look set my heart aching instantly and on the spot I knew I was going to play Richard, come what may. That big boy has to get me, I decided. I would present myself in every possible way for his taking, I swore within.
Right then, I made an eager excuse and adrenaline drifted me towards the general side of the lad. Almost immediately, he accosted me, leaving behind the skinny gal in his company. It was indeed blunt, more adrenaline shot into my veins to excite me more. That kind of a move on a lass wasn’t common. Contact was brief and after he handed me his card discreetly, the meeting ended. He seemed to know we wanted the same thing. No word was spoken. Only thin smiles transpired but mine was a lot more afraid for normalcy.
The name on the card was Nico. Him and me soon took on a clandestine affair of number twos. He had a steady girl, Paulette, the famished girl he had been with at the theatre. I gathered that they were fond and close though it beat basic logic; the fact that our thing was grew hotter, and seethes beneath exploded exothermically whenever I met him. The stolen moments wasted no minutes on neither preludes nor interludes as we ate each other up like two ravenous ogres out to gobble each other up greedily.
Needles to say, Nico and I became best of friends in every way. Our legal partners took that fact as we gave it, letting us have our pseudo-privacies that soon became part official. I had become an infidel of sort. Love grew and I liked it. Richard wasn’t any skeptical but constantly wondered what a good lass like me would want out of a lad, with lots of rough edges like Nico. I didn’t know but another lesson was in the offing to complement the one from my affair with Ben.
One fateful day, from the shadows I watched Richard and Paulette suddenly go into an unexpected kissing spree. It was meant to be stolen and - I had gathered a strong feeling earlier to believe that Richard and Paulette were having a thing behind my and Nico’s back! I thought to confront Richard but thought better not to. Probably, his inner eye had seen my romantic affiliation to Paulette’s Nico too and he was either paying back or drifting naturally to Paulette to fill the gap that Nico was leaving more gaping with time.
One Sunday, the four of us were lounging together and Nico, being the ruff-neck, laid bare truth of the hidden relationships.
“Let’s not pretend any longer,” he said, “it’s a cross-over.”
Mouths went dry but when he suggested official swaps, bluntly still, sighs of relief were emanated from the rest as signature appends on the suggested deal. That evening, Richard became my official former and as a caution from my past lessons, I decided to tag Nico as far away from Paulette as possible. I did not want to get entangled with Richard anyway. Some friendships had to be lost - and they soon were.
Nico turned out to be the man I wanted to father my future babies. Not that he was any more gorgeous beyond normal but he attracted my inner heat and he woke fires and I knew would never go out if he kept his side of the love bargain. I loved his physique and it was the same that I wanted of my future sons and daughters; big strong body bones, with wide shoulders reflecting abundant good health, surety; and stance of defiance as a sign of aggression for both protection and future fending support.
Unluckily, he died after a year in a horrific car crash on a working trip to Nakuru. I was very devastated! May his soul rest in eternal peace.
Later I did some thin college and got a little job as a receptionist with a rich man’s firm in town. Thank God. That was one step though puny, towards financial independence that I had so much yearned all along, especially after losing Nico. I opened my first bank account and was gearing for more advancement. As a lass with a keen eye on looks I wanted be in a good position to make whatever I wanted of myself, especially since my kind of job needed a good face for the company’s facade. I promised myself a few things; one was to brush boys aside as a sign of continued remembrance and faith to Nico. I also needed to develop a career, to improve on the financial inadequacies that had lit my upbringing; perhaps I would be able sooner to get out of home and start to make it on my very own. How life was so promising to light up in spite of Nico’s passing on!
Let me say a few things about myself, maybe you’ll be able to see well into my personality. My name is Jackie and I am 26. I am a size ten, five foot five but I fancy high soles that add me at least three inches - I know you know that the sum of five-eight makes a lass be really outstanding vertically, she only needs a little more of other qualities and attitude to become a darling angel. My skin is chocolate brown, smooth and my face, round. My cheeks are not boned and when I smile, I hear the best of me comes out; perfect teeth that are white, and deep wells of rippled dimples that are my hallmark. I have full lips that spout. I know my eyes are large, animal dark and intoxicating, coupled with pupils that are even darker and hard to notice, unless I’m out in the clear noon-sun; then they become prying but thank God, I never let my eyes to stay on other people’s any longer that briefly.
My legs are kinda long and trim with soft, full and even calves and are bow-ish, I hated them in teenage, especially coz I had to cross town in a skirt as a school girl through out the terms but I wished I knew better their greater worth. They are outstanding, not my comments! My voice is Tony Braxton’s baritone and I suspect it gives me a commanding aspect; especially since I’m quite a talker from every angle and placement.
My general facade is above par though if I were a car, I wouldn’t be top of the range. I am not the listening type though I believe I have a quick wit to learn the drift of things as they come. Heart-full laughter is my favorite hobby apart from mingling and making friends. I party less since the demise of Nico but it’s okay, I bet some things have to change in life, either with the coming of new age or from lessons of the past.
My present boss has a cousin. A typical male who feels for me but I hate that. I know he thinks that my feelings reciprocate but it’s all about my job. As a receptionist I am paid to smile faithfully and I enjoy that. I give him some too and I notice it turns him more head-over-heels on me. He takes the most of his working hours hovering like a bird with a nest next to my desk. My boss is an ok guy and he chides me about his wanting cousin, Tolbert is the lad’s name. I don’t like that but hope he stops such thoughts. I told Tolbert off softly but he sees it as a challenge and has since doubled up his heat on me. I said that I am seeing someone else and we are steady and it just got him more aroused. My kind were meant for him, his eye said. I hate that, especially since it looked obvious that he sees himself as the better male for whichever woman his heart has lined up for seduction.
Tolbert, on the average is a mere rich kid. Handsome, born and bred in wealthy air, knowing not what shortages mean, financial and social. He drives a convertible BMW and - I once rode in it when he insisted on taking me home one evening when it was late and public transport wasn’t available. I saw the shocked look on his face as he consumed the poor environment of my residence. He suggested moving me to the other side of town. I refused. Affluence will come, I thought, but I’ll be the one to bring it. Boys like Tolbert never gave a lass anything for free; and in a case like mine, I would be at his beck and call.
It bothered me how to reduce Tolbert’s coming on at me but last week brought a chance. I met Noel again, the former estate kid who took my heart into his whirlwind. For once he saw me and waved. His new office is right across us on the street. Nothing about his looks and general attitude is different but when I spoke to him again I gathered that his job was better and his life more set than mine. He drives a Legacy, the same car that makes me go crazy and wishing for my own. It’s just a matter of time, I thought to myself; then we’ll be economic rivals, I told him within.
Noel asked me for a date and I obliged but with a knowing that I had only two intentions to fulfill. To toss Tolbert off my trail. And to learn methods that lead me towards the top. My teenage fire for him has since died, thanks to the tidbits of experiences with boys and bad fates that happened along the way. One day, God willing, one man will come along; a man at par with Nico or more, to take me into his heart, then probably I will think of settling down and starting a family. At 26 and with not much career achievement to be proud of, a lass like me really needs to put jokes far aside for a while; that’s why I’ll begin a management course at the Kenya Institute of Management in a week’s time. That will be but a mere start towards my future. I know it will be bright.