LOVE BINDS. PART THREE: COINS HAVE MORE THAN TWO SIDES.

The sun scorched my feet in the kind of way that felt good. I just survived a flight from Kenya and my feet were heavy and twice their size. I missed the beach and the soothing temperatures and sounds but I was home; the sound of Woodlands was a sound I knew and loved. It was very quiet there, it had always been. I was glad to be back, I grew up in those dusty streets. Everyone moved out and moved on except M. Bison, Bison was the constant. Every childhood memory had Bison in it, laughing and running, shouting and winning. Bison was born of the elderly couple that lived down the street. The whole street was occupied by church people and members of the clergy so they visited each other and the kids played together, that’s what church people did. The elderly people had been together for twenty years and had no children. When my parents moved to the street, my mother was heavily pregnant with me and the elderly woman, Mrs Kapapula, took an almost obsessive liking to my mother. The Kapapulas brought fruits, toys, woven gifts and even a grand, pink doll house just in case I was born a girl. My parents were a young couple far from everything familiar so they welcomed the attention. I was born at 3.5kgs; a boy. My mother claims she knew I would be tall from the minute she saw me. They were excited. Years later when I was about three, my mother liberally slathered Vaseline on me and prepared me to visit the Kapapulas. My mother gave me the pink doll house and sent me to their house. I loved going there. Their house was always warm and smelled like freshly baked cookies. Once there, Mrs. K led me to the bedroom that was their study room, it usually had books and a giant desk but once I got there, the change was obvious. The formerly grey walls were transformed to a bright pink, the curtains were yellow and the dull brown carpet was replaced with bright flooring. More fascinating than the room was the tiny creature swaddled in pink and white, her tiny fingers were active and fidgety but her eyes were shut. Being around her was weird, how was I supposed to give the tiny creature the doll house?

The tiny creature was named Mwila-An Kapapula. She grew up fast, in what seemed like a flash she became lively and talkative. She was always at our house and my mother projected all her wishes about having a daughter on her. Eventually she grew to beat all the guys in the street at Street Fighter while her doll house stayed in her bedroom untouched. We called her M. Bison and everyone eventually forgot her name was Mwila-An.

I grabbed my phone for some music. Ed Sheeran crooned and for the first time his song, was just a song. It’s funny how a song is just a song when you are not in love. Not more than a week had passed since his music brought blue eyes and blonde hair to my mind. We played him on our dates, our walks, our fights and our sessions and now it was just music. Really good music. I cheated on you, I knew something was off with you and I needed to feel alive, I needed to lose myself in someone and you just weren’t there… I could hear Samantha’s voice in my head, the memory of a satisfied vengeful look on her face as she said the words was still trapped in my head and it left a nasty after taste. I needed to cleanse my Ed Sheeran album by making new memories with it. Love is more than the desire to be held at night or the desire to ‘lose yourself in someone’. I needed more than Samantha could ever give me and it wasn’t even her fault.

What was love anyway? Was it tangible if it dissipated so quickly? Was it sensible to make decisions because of something that wasn’t really something real? The more I thought about it the more convinced I became that maybe I hadn’t loved or been loved. There was a certain perfection to the way couples fell in love. It was like their love created this bubble that exempted them from all of life’s harsh realities. They were not tested by life or by change. I had seen myself grow from a boy who gave his virginity to Mwiinga to a man who only remembered the highs and most recent aspects of his sex life. It was all a serious blur of non-entities; people who quickly ceased to matter. I was mourning my break up, yes. But not because Samantha was the one. I was mourning because she was another one who wasn’t the one. People change and grow to become other things, things they aren’t sure they will necessarily love forever. I changed and stopped loving Samantha and her reaction to my change was cheating. Maybe her instinct warned her and cheating was her way of winning the break up – I don’t know. Maybe ‘the one’ is as real as Santa Clause. Maybe this whole love thing is an act. An eloquent act that society forces us to be a part of.  Ed Sheeran paused at the chorus of Thinking Out Loud and my phone vibrated, jolting me out of my thoughts.

“Wass the story like mana? Heard you’re back in the Berg. Can we link?”

“Butah, land my guy.”

Bison was the only person who I spoke to that way. She was there in the hip hop phase. The phase when money was ‘shackles’ or ‘loot’, girls were ‘guzas’ and every word was flipped; doog, doof, nophe. We could hold a straight conversation full of these words while people who didn’t understand tried to decode. We were ‘G’. She was shipped off to boarding school but when she returned it was like she never left, our friendship never missed a beat. One time she left and came back fuller, I thought it was just weight gain but I soon realised it was puberty. Puberty came with breasts, hips and these odd looking pimples on her forehead. I touched her newly acquired breasts that day and we both burst out laughing. That’s how we knew we would be platonic forever.

“Butah wasweta! Beach air has made you a light skin son!” Bison said.

“I always told you there was a light skin trapped in me by this Zambian sun bruh. But it won’t last, I am a black man.” I said.

Like I said, no beat missed. Our friends moved on to speaking formal English and entering the society of the employed and there we were laughing at my complexion. I hadn’t realised just how much I missed her. I looked at her closely, trying to see how much she changed in the year that passed. She sat on the veranda, leaned on the pillar to join me in my sun bath.

“What graft is this where they let lawyers wear converse?” I asked her.

“I’m enjoying my off days because of bar exams. On a normal day I am in heels and the usual monkey suits.” She said and sprawled out to sun bathe properly.

It wasn’t easy to picture her in heels, or a dress for that matter. Her forehead had a pimple here and there, astoundingly her weight and shoe size stayed the same for years. Her breasts seemed huge when we were younger but in retrospect they weren’t, they just had nothing to compare them to in an all-boys clique. Her legs were still thick and thighs still full. She was in an outfit I felt like I had seen before; blue shorts, a loose white vest and worn out converse sneakers. If it wasn’t for the soft, supple nature of her skin and full calves she’d have passed for a boy. She rumbled on about her work and bar exam struggle and I made empathising sounds. I could sympathise but I couldn’t empathise. I finished my economics degree and worked for a year and a half at a boring job before I decided to visit my mother. She was doing diplomatic service in Kenya at the time. She had money, a huge house near beach hotels and a life lubricated by luxuries. It was the perfect recipe for fun. I hadn’t felt any passion for a career like Bison did so it was easy to leave my job and just go. It was a long overdue holiday and I enjoyed it. The white women had jungle fever and I was more than eager to get more experience under my belt. The local Kenyan women were beautiful and curious, they wanted to see if what they heard about Zambian men was true. In Zambia I was ordinary but in Kenya I was exotic; exotic always gets panties dropping. After a while I started to understand Mwiinga and her sex disciples. Sex with different people was fun and the body count rose too easily. Then I met Samantha…

I was back, I needed to get a job and make my reality work for me.

“So… Samantha, wass the story?” Bison said.

“Ah. It died.” I replied. I deliberately avoided eye contact and hoped she wouldn’t probe.

“How? You guys were talking marriage, you even became distant.” She insisted.

“The chick was always with me, she had a password to my phone and it was hard to text you all the details.” I felt like I needed to defend myself. I didn’t regret shutting out the world when I was with Samantha, I was fully in my moment with her.

“I knew it wasn’t going anywhere.” Bison said with a smug smile.

“How could you know that?” I retorted.

“I just did. She didn’t seem smart. Hold up, she didn’t even seem like she knew you. She had you answering to ‘Ish’ bruh! You hate being called ‘Ish’. Your relationship was like the Titanic. Big, flashy but destined for the biggest sink of the century.” Bison said with a bitter undertone. “You’re lucky you didn’t catch something.” She added.

“I actually liked being called Ish, she made it sound good.” I said.

“Right. You just liked the excessive sex.” Bison said the word sex like it was a taboo.

That was the thing about Bison, she revelled in being the prophet of doom. That’s why I ignored her when I was away. I needed a less cynical mind with me. I needed to enjoy my adventures without being reminded of who I was by people who know me too well. My lovers allowed me to be more than who I was. In Samantha’s big blue eyes I was an exotic Zambian lover, I was enough and she was proud to be with me.

“You know, if your advice was so great you would be in a relationship right now – you’d be married!” I said and burst out in a fit of mocking laughter.

“Thing is you want fireworks. Love isn’t that.”  Bison started to say but I didn’t let her finish.

“Bison, how would you know what love is? If you’re such an expert how come all you have is no dates and your virginity to show for it?” I assert.

“Ishmael, let’s not say things we can’t take back.” She only called me Ishmael when she was irritated, but if she was irritated, she didn’t let on. Instead she looked at me square in the eye like the stubborn woman she was.

“No seriously Mwila-An. You make it seem like you’re the love oracle but all you are is a lonely twenty four year old girl who is looking for her happy ending. Cut the act.”

It was quiet but for my heavy breathing. I didn’t even know how I got so worked up.

“I am not acting. I am honest with myself. You’re the one projecting your shit on me. You are the one who seems to lose yourself every single time you get close to a woman who’s dumb enough to let you hit it. I am good,” She said. “I may be alone now but I am not the one making a chain of stupid decisions.”

“You know what, get out.” For the first time in the entire conversation I struck a nerve, she looked at me, forehead pimples glinting in the sun. “You heard me, bounce.”

We always argued, it wasn’t new. I knew she was going to say something stupid in return but she wasn’t going anywhere.

“No, I’m not going anywhere until you stop talking shit.” She said and crossed her arms exactly the way she did when she was a toddler.

“Bruh, go. You act like your life is all good. Throwing yourself into work and school but it all doesn’t count. Maybe you should accept that love is fiction and nobody will ever want you. Nobody ever really wants anyone.”

I regretted the words immediately they left my mouth. Her face dropped but I was too far in to retract.

“I’m leaving.” She said after an eternity of silence.

 Ever notice how the birds chirp much louder when a moment is uncomfortable?

“Thank you. There is no room for your self-righteous attitude here.” I said.

The gate hadn’t even closed behind her before I started planning my apology. I wanted to go after her but my pride was an anchor bound to my feet. I sat there regretting. Bison is…was my best friend. I needed some fresh air, something to forget everything and how it didn’t make sense… I needed vodka.